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FOR 



Duessn^akeus. 



X 



TAI. "You bid me make it orderly and well, 

According to the fashion and the time." 

PET. "Marry, and did; but if you be remember'd, 
I did not bid you mar it to the time." 

The Ta7ning of the Shrew, Act IV. Sc. III. 



3 East I9tl? Street, 

(bet. B'WAY. & 6TH AVE.) 

f/eu; Yor^. 



\.^ \\ ^AH 1418961 



<>1 



COPVRieHT. ies6 by the MORSK-SROUaMTON oo. 



To tl?e Dressmakers of p^Qriea. 

THIS UTTLK BOOK IS DEDICATED TO YOU WITH THE 
PERMISSION OF SO MANY OF YOUR NUMBER, THAT 
THE AUTHOR IS ENCOURAGED TO HOPE, THAT ALh MAY 
DISCOVER WITHIN ITS PAGES, SUCH ASSISTANCE IN 
THEIR PROFESSION, AS WII,!, AT LEAST, GUARANTEE 
THE WISDOM OF ATTEMPTING TO SUPPLY WHAT HAS 
HITHERTO BEEN DECLARED AN IMPRACTICABILITY, 
NAMELY— A TEXT BOOK FOR DRESSMAKERS. 

THE FOLLOWING PAGES MAKE NO PRETENSIONS TO 
COVER THE GROUND. THEY ARE DESIGNED MERELY 
TO SURVEY IT AND TO REGISTER THE CONVICTIONS 
OF THOSE WHO HAVE THE INTERESTS OF DRESS- 
MAKERS AT HEART, THAT THERE IS NO VALID REASON 
WHY THEY SHOULD NOT BE ABLE TO TURN IN MANY 
DIRECTIONS AND FIND INSPIRATION AND HELP, INSTEAD 
OF, AS NOW, FINDING EVERY HAND ARRAYED AGAINST 
THEM; FROM THAT OF THE WOMAN WHO EMPLOYS 
THEM, TO THE SHOPKEEPER WHO SELLS READY-MADE 
GARMENTS, AND, MOST DISHEARTENING FACT OF ALL, 
THE HAND OF EVERY MEMBER OF THEIR OWN PRO- 
FESSION. 

DRESSMAKERS ARE AN INTEGRAL PART OF MODERN 
LIFE. CIVILIZATION CAN BE IMAGINED, THAT SHALL 
BE SO IDEALIZED THAT MANY PROFESSIONS CAN BE 
DONE AWAY WITH. WE MAY SOME DAY BECOME SO 
HYGIENIC, PHYSICIANS WILL BE UNNECESSARY. WE 
MAY GROW SO PACIFIC, LAWYERS WILL NOT BE ESSEN- 
TIAL TO THE LIFE OF THE COUNTRY. BY THE DE- 
VELOPMENT OF ALTRUISTIC TENDENCIES. PREACHERS 
MAY FIND THEIR PROVINCES ANNIHILATED. BUT SO 
LONG AS HUMAN NATURE ENDURES, THE DRESSMAKER 
MUST ABIDE. HER POSITION BEING A PERMANENT 
ONE, IS IT NOT TIME THAT HER PROFESSION SHOULD 
BEGIN TO WORK IN HARMONY? 

PROBABLY NO BODY OF WOMEN ANYWHERE HAVE 
ACCOMPLISHED SO MUCH, WITH SO LITTLE HELP, AS 
HAVE THE AMERICAN DRESSMAKERS. THEY HAVE 
HAD THE FAMOUS DRESS ESTABLISHMENTS OF EUROPE 
FOR COMPETITORS. THEY HAVE HAD NONE OF THE 
ASSISTANCE FROM BOOKS OR WRITERS OR PREACHERS, 
AVAILABLE FOR ALL OTHER PROFESSIONS. THEY 
HAVE FOUND MEMBERS OF THEIR OWN PROFESSION, 
READY TO CUT PRICES AND LOWER STANDARDS. BUT 



NO TWO OF THEM READY TO JOIN HANDS, TO 
EQUALIZE WORK AND REMUNERATION, AND DIGNIFY 
THE CALLING. LOUD VOICED AND NARROW-MINDED 
PEOPLE DECRY THE ART OF DRESS AND IN THE SAME 
BREATH THEY ALLOW THE VIRTUES AND BEAUTIES 
OF PICTURES AND STATUES. AGAINST OBSTACLES ON 
ALL SIDES, THE AMERICAN DRESSMAKER HAS WON A 
NAME AND FAME FOR HERSELF, WHEN, BESIDE HER 
TALENT, SHE HAS HAD THE PLUCK AND STRENGTH TO 
ENDURE. MANY WHO HAVE THE TALENT SUFFER 
FOR OPPORTUNITY TO EDUCATE IT, AND FOR LACK OF 
ASSISTANCE AND SYMPATHY TO NOURISH IT. AND 
SPEND LONGER OR SHORTER LIVES IN CEASELESS 
TOIL FOR WANT OF A FRIENDLY HAND, WHICH, IF 
THEY COULD BUT GRASP FOR THEMSELVES, THEY 
WOULD BE GLAD TO PASS ALONG TO OTHERS. 

IS NOT THE TIME RIPE FOR DRESSMAKERS TO 
ASSERT THEIR RIGHTS, TO BE RECOGNIZED AS OTHER 
BODIES OF WORKERS ALL OVER THE LAND ARE REC- 
OGNIZED? IT SEEMS SO TO THE AUTHOR AND TO THE 
PUBLISHERS OF THESE PAGES WHO OFFER THE SUG- 
GESTIONS CONTAINED IN THE SUBJOINED CHAPTERS 
WITH THE AMBITION TO HELP DRESSMAKERS WHO 
NEED HELP TO HELP THEMSELVES. AND TO EMPHASIZE. 
IF POSSIBLE, THE VALUE OF THE WORK DONE BY THE 
MEMBERS OF A MUCH ABUSED PROFESSION THAT HAS 
ACCOMPLISHED WONDERS AND HAS WONDERS YET TO 
COMPASS. 



PREFACE. 



CONSIDERING THAT DRE;SS AFFE;CTS EVERY WOMAN 
IN EVERY CIVII,IZED AND SEMX-CIVII,IZED COUNTRY 
ON THE FACE OF THE GI^OBE, THERE IS A CURIOUS 
LACK OF WTERATURE ON THE SUBJECT. 

THERE IS NO LACK OF FASHION JOURNALS. 

MANY OF THESE ARE VERY POOR, SOME ARE 
FAIR. ONLY A FEW ARE RELIABLE. IT IS IMPORTANT 
FOR THE DRESSMAKER TO SELECT OUT OF THESE A 
FEW THAT ARE MOST CORRECT. TO MAKE SURE 

THAT SHE HAS THE BEST SHE MUST MAKE A STUDY 
OF THE JOURNALS AND MAKE HER SELECTION ACCORD- 
ING TO HER BEST JUDGEMENT. IT MEANS MUCH TO 
THE DRESSMAKER THAT SHE SHALL HAVE ONLY THE 
BEST FASHION JOURNAL, THE ONE THAT GIVES HER 
STRICTLY ORIGINAL DESIGNS OF THE MOST FASHION- 
ABLE AND ARTISTIC GRADE. THE TIME USED IN 
MAKING HER SELECTION IS WELL SPENT. 

THE ONLY FASHION JOURNAL WORTH SUBSCRIBING 
TO, IS THE ONE THAT GETS ITS ILLUSTRATIONS FROM 
PARIS, NOT FROM FOREIGN PERIODICALS, BUT FROM 
THE ARTIST-DESIGNERS OF FASHIONS WHO DESIGN 
EXCLUSIVELY FOR THE JOURNALS IN QUESTION. IF 
THE DRESSMAKER VALUES HER REPUTATION AS A 
DRESSMAXCER AND WISHES TO INCREASE HER INCOME 
SHE WILL PAY AS MUCH ATTENTION TO THE SELECT- 
ION OF HER FASHION JOURNAL AS THE DOCTOR DOES 
IN SELECTING HIS MEDICAL JOURNAL, AS THE LAWYER 
DOES IN SELECTING HIS LAW LIBRARY. 

BUT EVEN THE BEST FASHION JOURNAL IS RE- 
QUIRED TO DEVOTE ITSELF TO THE FASHIONS OP 
THE DAY. IT PUBLISHES FROM ISSUE TO ISSUE 
MUCH THAT IS OF VALUE TO THE DRESSMAKER IN THE 
WAY OF HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS ABOUT CARRYING 
ON HER WORK, BUT IT IS MANIFESTLY IMPOSSIBLE TO 
REPEAT THESE IN EACH ISSUE. THE RESULT IS 

THAT THE NEW SUBSCRIBER OFTEN LOSES MUCH 
THAT XHE OLD SUBSCRIBER HAS HAD THE BENEFIT 
OF LEARNING. 

WHERE CAN THESE VALUABLE HINTS AND SUG- 
GESTIONS BE FOUND? 

THE DRESSMAKER WHO LOOKS UPON HER CALI/- 
ING AS A PROFESSION AND WISHES TO RISE IN IT, 
BUT IS MORE OR LESS AT SEA HOW TO SET TO WORK 
TO DO SO, MAY LOOK IN LIBRARIES IN VAIN FOR 
INFORMATION THAT HAS ANY PRACTICAL, PERMAN:ENT 
VALUE. 



EVERY TRADE AND PROFESSION BUT THAT OF 
THE DRESSMAKER IS RICH IN BOOKS OF REFERENCE 
IT CANNOT BE THE EPHEMERAI^ NATURE OF FASH- 
IONS THAT PREVENTS SUCH HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS, 
BEING PENNED FOR THE DRESSMAKER'S GUIDANCE. 
FASHIONS THEMSELVES HAVE NOT CHANGED .SO RADI- 
CALLY AS HAS THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE AND 
SURGERY, OR MUCH OFTENER. NEW MEDICINES ARE 
INTRODUCED QUITE AS OFTEN AS NEW DRESSES, BUT 
FROM THE VERIEST TYRO TO THE MOST PROMINENT 
PHYSICIANS LIVING, THERE IS NO ONE OF THEM 
DESIRING ANY KIND OF INFORMATION ABOUT THE 
PRACTICE OF MEDICINE FROM THE DAYS OF AESCULAP- 
IUS DOWN TO THE PRESENT TIME WHO CANNOT FIND 
IT FOR THE SEEKING. PERHAPS DRESSMAKERS ARE 
THEMSELVES TO BLAME. 

DRESSMAKERS CATER TO MORE PEOPLE THAN THE 
FOLLOWERS OF ANY OTHER CALLING ON THE FACE OF 
THE EARTH, EXCEPT THE DEALERS IN FOODS. THEY 
CANNOT BE LESS DESERVING OF ATTENTION THAN 
THOSE WHO ARE BROUGHT INTO CONTACT WITH 
FEWER PEOPLE, AND WHOSE NEEDS ARE THEREFORE 
MORE LIMITED. 

THE LAWYER CAN REFER TO ANY DISTINCTIVE 
CASE EVER TRIED IN THE COURTS OF THE WORLD, AND 
THUS GET "POINTERS" FOR TRYING HIS OWN, BUT 
THE DRESSMAKER WHO DOES NOT FIND OUT FOR 
HERSELF WHY SHE IS DRAGGING ALONG WITH A PITI- 
FULLY SMALL AMOUNT OF CUSTOM, WHILE HER NEIGH- 
BOR HAS MORE THAN SHE CAN DO, IS LEFT TO EAT HER 
BREAD WITHOUT BUTTER, WHILE DRESSMAKERS WITH- 
OUT ABLER BRAINS, WARMER HEARTS, FINER FEELINGS 
OR TENDERER SYMPATHIES, THAN HERS, MAY HAVE A 
BOX AT THE OPERA, DINE ON SWEETBREADS AND HOT 
HOUSE GRAPES, SUBSCRIBE TO ALL THE CHARITIES, 
AND ESTABLISH A FUND FOR THEIR OLD AGE. 

WHY ? 

SOMEWHERE DRESSMAKER NUMBER TWO, HAS 
LEARNED THE ART OF HER TRADE, WHILE NUMBER 
ONE IS GROPING IN VAIN TO FIND IT. 

THE FOLLOWING CHAPTERS HAVE BEEN WRITTEN 
IN ANSWER TO THE PERSONAL REQUESTS OF HUN- 
DREDS OF READERS OF FASHION JOURNALS, FOR 
"SOMETHING IN BOOK FORM ABOUT DRESSMAKING" 
THAT WOULD HELP THEM TO ADVANCE IN THEIR 
WORK, INSTEAD OF STANDING STILL OR RETROGRAD- 
ING. THAT THEY ARE SUPPOSED OFTEN TIMES TO 
RETROGRADE, NO ONE CAN DOUBT WHO RECALLS THE 
FREQUENT COMPLAINT THAT MRS. A. OR B. OR C. IS 
"GETTING TOO OLD TO BE A DRESSMAKER." 



MRS. A. OR B. OR C. SHOUI^D BE) ABLE TO DO 
BETTER WORK THE LONGER SHE IS IN THE PROFESSION, 
IT IS BECAUSE SHE DROPS BEHIND THE TIME, AND 
DRESSES YOUNG AND OLD ALIKE, AND MAKES GOWNS 
IN 1S95 AS SHE DID IN 1875 THAT LESSENS HER FAME, 
NOT THE FACT OF HER YEARS. 

THE MISSION UNDERTAKEN BY THIS LITTLE BOOK 
IS A MODEST ONE, IT IS NOT DESIGNED TO EXHAUST 
THE SUBJECT, IF IT TRJED TO DO SO, IT WOULD 
PROVE SO LONG THAT IT WOULD NEVER BE READ 
THROUGH. DRESSMAKING IS NOT A PROFESSION OF 
RULES BUT OF EXCEPTIONS, AND ONE BOOK COULD 
NOT CONTAIN THEM ALL. EVERY NEW FACE AND 
FIGURE INTRODUCES A NEW FEATURE IN DRESS- 
MAKING, OR SHOULD, IT DOES TO THE MINDS OF THE 
MOST SUCCESSFUL DRESSMAKERS. 

IT IS MERELY A COLLECTION OF HINTS AND SUG- 
GESTIONS THAT ARE SET DOWN IN THE ACCOMPANYING 
TALKS WITH DRESSMAKERS, HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS 
WHICH IT IS HOPED MAY PROVE TO BE HELPFUL TO SOME 
ONE SOMEWHERE, BY EMPHASIZING THE OPINIONS AND 
EXAMPLES OF THE DRESSMAKERS IN THE WORLD OF 
FASHION WHO ARE CAPTURING THE PRIZES OF FORTUNE 
AND FAME. 

FORTUNE AND FAME SHOULD BE YOURS. THEY MAY 
BE IF YOU WILL WORK FOR THEM. WILI» YOU ? 

NEW YORK, 1S96. 



CONTENTS, 

Dedication . . . . 

Preface . - - - 

The Dressmaker - - - / 

Dressmaking Systems - -6 

Fitting - - - -II 

Cutting and Basting - - /p 

Making - - - ' ^7 

Dress Goods - - - ^6 

Trimmings, Laces, Furs, etc., - ^^ 

Color - - - - 5^ 

Style - - - . . 5c? 

How to select Costumes - - 6^ 

Fconomy - - - '7^ 

Making-Over - ' ' 77 

Dress Reform - - -82 

In Conclusion - - - - ^5 




Tl?e Dressmal^er. 



THERE are dressmakers and dressmakers. 
Between those who lack even mechanical skill and 
those whose "creations" are the talk and admiration of 
both hemispheres there are a great many grades. There 
are however but two classes, artists and artisans. 

To inquire into and set forth simply some of the 
radical and distinguishing differences in the methods 
and results of the work of the two classes, with a view 
to practically assisting dressmakers everywhere to make 
the most of their capabilities is the purpose of a series 
of talks on the subject of which this is the initial 
number. 

Whether one is an artist or an artisan in whatever 
she undertakes to do, whether it is to make a dress or 
lobby a bill through Congress, depends not only upon 
the dexterity with which she manipulates the actual 
tools of her craft, be they scissors or tongue — as so many 
apparently suppose-^but upon all the faculties of the 
worker, and her power or lack of it, in employing them. 

Certain queries suggest themselves at the outset 
to whomever gives a second thought to dressmaking. 
For example — Why can some dressmakers ask and 
receive four or six or ten times as much money for 
making a dress as some others get? 

The reasons are a little way below the surface, but 
it pays to unearth them because they have to 
do with the verj-' foundations of good and successful 
dressmaking. The investigation, if well conducted, and 
thoughtfully followed will answer the question not only 
so far as money is concerned, but will put into bold 
relief the reasons why one woman is ill-dressed in the 
exact duplicate of her well dressed neighbor's toilet. 

The difference between Worth's fame and that of 
Miss Slimpkins of Jones' Corner may be merely a 
difference of opportunity. But the chances are that if 
Miss Slimpkins has never been heard of, it is because 



her work bears the same relation to that of the famous 
artist, in dress that the frame made by the mechanic 
bears to the canvas painted by Raphael. This much 
is certain ; every dressmaker whether in the city or 
backwoods has a chance to show what she can do with 
every gown she makes, and if Miss Slimpkins is an artist 
her fame will not long be compassed by the Corner, 
The late Mr. Worth was but a poor and uneducated ap- 
prentice when he was thirteen years old, but in his time 
he made gowns for every Queen of Europe except 
Victoria who cares nothing for good clothes. 

The dressmaker who becomes famous, whose work 
is in demand long before that time, and who is always 
handsomely paid for it, is she (or he) who not only 
knows how to cut and fit and sew, but who uses this 
knowledge with a clear comprehension of the laws of 
beauty in dress. This comprehension is as much a part 
of her stock in trade as dressgoods. She weaves this 
wisdom into the lines of the gowns she makes, and 
through its decorations, and she sends in her bill 
accordingly. When she is paid it is not only in money, 
but in reputation. 

The artisan on the other hand knows only the 
technical part of her trade, and this often but indiffer- 
ently well. She gets her ideas from others, and often 
is not clever at appropriating them. Her services are 
all told when mention is made of the smaller or greater 
number of seams and ruffles that she puts into a gown. 
Her patrons pay her merely for the work of her hands, 
not for the insight of the artist, that puts a fine harmony 
into all her handiwork, for of this quality she has none. 

True, the prestige of a long established reputation 
for being an excellent workwoman and artist combined, 
permits one to " pick and choose" her customers, from 
among the number that flock to her, and she can charge 
and receive larger prices than the unknown dressmaker 
can command, though the latter be equally accomplished. 
But this prestige is an effect, not the cause of suc- 
cess. Merit in work tells its own story, and one that is 
not long in getting noised abroad. If one has the ambi- 
tion to do work second to none, and the ability whether 

2. 



still latent or already developed, to support such an 
ambition she can safely count upon sooner or later 
securing the highest market price for whatever she does, 
and the reputation to boot that brings her even more 
satisfaction. 

Selection, Style, Color, Fitness, Economy — these all 
play important roles in dressmaking, and need to be 
considered, and to be considered wisely, and sympathet- 
ically, and just as conscientiously as the intricacies of 
Cutting, Fitting, Plaiting or Shirring. 

The difference between the poor artisan dressmaker 
and the good artist dressmaker is not in their respective 
systems of draughting ; it is a many-sided difference, 
but this generalization covers the ground; the poor 
dressmaker looks upon each dress as so much snipping 
and sewing ; the good dressmaker views each gown that 
she makes as whole. She does not make one dress after 
another, without regard to anything but the size of the 
intended wearer, and copying the latest wrinkle of some 
French dressmaker. Instead, she considers each dress 
that she makes, no matter how simple it is to be, as a 
creation of itself, aisd not with regard to any woman, 
but with the strictest regard to one woman, her for 
whom it is intended. She studies her figure, her com- 
plexion, her needs-whether she can have a dress for 
every new function and needs a great many, or whether 
she must make one dress answer for a great many diff- 
erent occasions. The good dressmaker feels it incumbent 
upon her for the sake of her reputation, to give each 
of her customers the benefit of her supposedly superior 
judgement, and if she does this her fame spreads fast 
and far. 

It isn't enough to advise me that I shall require so 
many yards of material for a dress when I ask for your 
assistance. If you make good your claim to understan- 
ding the art of dressmaking, you will be able to caution 
me against buying for my one best dress something that 
will look well only a few times, or something that will 
make me look less well than I might. You will counsel 
me not to insist upon having my flimsy summer silk 
made in the fashion selected by my friend for her heavy 
3. 



broadcloth, and will know better than to permit me to 
clothe my short, stout, figure in a gown that is becoming 
only to a tall and slender ;woman. 

If you have all this superior sort of wisdom anent 
clothes at your fingers' and tongue's end, and possess 
into the bargain the rest of the knowledge of dress- 
making that insures your tight-fitting bodices, fitting 
like wall paper, and your loose-fitting ones like the 
draperies of the old masters ; that never fails to have 
your skirts hang well, and your sewing last while the 
garment does ; if in short you make me and every other 
one of your customers look as well as it is possible for 
us to look, you will find in us the best possible advertis- 
ing medium that you could have. 

This is the grade of work turned out by the leading 
foreign dressmakers. It is the grade of work turned 
out by the rapidly increasing number of most admirable 
artists in dress in this country. It is the standard of 
work to aim at, for every one who aspires to be a leader 
in her profession whether her place of business is in New 
York City or some hamlet in Indian Territory. 

An apprenticeship under an able teacher is an ex- 
cellent school for one who feels her own shortcomingsrto 
be very many, but many of the leading dressmakers to- 
day have had few other instructors than their own 
ability after they passed the first stage, where they 
learned the bare rudiments of the trade. Some are 
entirely self taught. The ins and outs of dressmaking 
are many, but one can learn the ins by "practice, and the 
outs by observation. 

Object lessons are worth volumes of sermons. It is 
the best possible help to cultivate the art of seeing, and 
thinking about what one notices. If the fashion plate, 
the imported or native-made model, the women who 
pass one upon the street, or in the drawing room appeal 
to the artistic sense, discover the reason. Depend upon 
it that the pictures whether living, or stamped in colors 
upon paper, which are quite satisfactory are not alone 
those whose gowns are perfection as gowns, but those 
whose toilets are perfection from the view-point of the 
woman they adorn. 

4. 



The inferior dressmaker's motto is, "anything so 
long as it looks like something." 

The superior dressmaker aims not to copy slavishly, 
but to create. 

There are dressmakers and dressmakers. 

The poor dressmaker's lot, that of the artisan, is a 
thorny one and an unsatisfactory one, and a poorly paid 
one. 

The lot of a good dressmaker, that of the artist, is 
not an easy one, but there is a vast deal of satisfaction 
in contemplating its achievements. 



^^YXTHAT dressmaking system do you use?" 

Poor over worked and worn out question! What 
does it matter, any way? Use whichever one you like, 
that most readily assists you in getting good results. 
How find this? By experimenting. One dressmaker 
" swears by" a system that the next dressmaker you 
question will tell you is absolutely unreliable. And 
if you took the time and trouble as the writer has done, 
to carry the question the rounds of the dressmakers, you 
would find that of the almost infinite variety of 
systems" each has its stanch adherents, and that 
equally lovely creations in dress are turned out by those 
using totally different systems. 

America, the country, is still old, but civilized 
America is young, and as a people we are still largely 
imitative. It is an excellent move on the part of you 
and me to profit all we can by the experience of others, 
but, in the end, we shall do nothing very great unless we 
do something orignal. By the amount of time spent in 
discussing dressmaking systems, it would seem that the 
cutting of a dress were all there were in it. In point of 
fact it is the least thing in the estimation of the famous 
dressmakers. Not that cutting is not an important 
factor in dressmaking ; it is, of course, but it is one of 
the mechanical operations, and as such quite subser- 
vient in point of value, to the artistic knowledge that 
makes a "creation" of every dress, and a "vision" of the 
woman who wears it. 

The fact that the majority of a dressmaker's patrons 
do not know whether they are well dressed or not, is 
not an excuse for some dressmakers who ask. "To 
what end, master the art of dressmaking, when all 
that the majority of the women care for is a dress a 'la 
mode, that fits well?" It is a mistake to think it is 
enough to know merely how to cut a dress so that it will 
turn out in the style of the day, that is, if one aspires to 
6. 



be one of the leaders in ones' profession. 

Elect for a cutting sj'stem, of course, one that an- 
swers your needs best, but do not exaggerate the import- 
ance of the cutting system. It is merely a stepping stone. 
not the goal. 

What systems do the best dressmakers use in 
cutting? 

Some of the leading cutters use no guide but their 
heads. They cut the lining for each dress bodice upon 
the figure. They throw a piece of slightly stiffened 
muslin over the shoulders, pin it here, and snip it there, 
and in a few minutes they have a lining guide of sur- 
prising accuracy. It looks easy. It is'nt. It is well 
enough for those accustomed to cut in this way to go on 
doing so, "letting well enough alone, " but there is 
nothing in the method to commend it to one not already 
able to follow it. 

All other cutting methods resolve themselves into 
cutting by chart, and cutting by paper patterns in work- 
ing size. 

. The number of cutting charts, so-called tailor 
systems, draughting machines, etc. , is large and con- 
stantly growing. Prices vary and so do the systems 
from a simple tape measure, and book of instructions, '.o 
complex formulas in the way of figuring, that none but 
students of the higher mathematics could possibly mas- 
ter in this life in time to make them useful. All are not 
equally valuable, indeed most of them are good for 
noting, all have their devoted followers, and those expert 
in evolving their several possibilities make by their aid 
absolutely perfect-fitting gowns. 

All mathematical chart systems of cutting depend 
entirely for their practical merit upon the skill with 
which they are used. They are not automatic ; they 
require to be operated by thinking heads and deft 
fingers. They are simply helps such as you get from 
your machine tape line and they supply, it must be re- 
membered, no designs of themselves. 

Those who are not apt at copying models from ideas 
carried in the head, or at designing garments outright 
7. 



are reduced to the necessity of using paper patterns 
that give precise working models. These in common 
with the charts are many and each manufacturer claims 
and finds those who support his claims that his patterns 
are the best. You and I may chance to prefer the same 
or different patterns, but having found what you like, 
there is no reason to give yourself any uneasiness be- 
cause I cut by a different system, providing the one you 
have gives you good results. 

If the female form divine were absolutely perfect, 
then a good draughing system would be the cutting 
system par excellence so far as fitting a garment goes, 
because after the first measurements were accurately 
taken. That is, if it were possible to take exact measures. 
We claim that it is not. There would be no need to try 
on a bodice. But the cry does not go any farther in 
dressmaking than it does in many other things. The 
perfect figure is hard to find, and "trying on" is bound 
to continue to be thought one of the bug-a-boos of 
dressmaking. Then too, so long as every dressmaker 
cannot live in the full glare of the great fashion centres 
whence the "styles" radiate, and all dressmakers have 
not yet arrived at the point where they can evolve from 
their creative and artistic faculties, beautiful designs of 
their own, recourse must be had to the models of others. 
These are furnished in fashion plates for those who can 
draught their patterns having once caught the idea of 
the design, and in paper patterns for those who prefer 
working models. 

It is buying experience too dearly to try each 
different make of paper pattern in turn, and run the risk 
of spoiling several frocks meanwhile. A simpler and 
better way is to pick out one make that promises to be 
among the best. How do this? 

One way would be to compare the reigning modes as 
exhibited by the fashion leaders, and described by the 
fashion chroniclers, with the journal and designs issued 
by the paper pattern dealers and publishers. Note by a 
comparison of different books, which manufacturer puts 
out the handsomest and most artistic styles and is thus 
8. 



most thoroughly up to date in catering to the great 
numbers of women who depend upon his guidance. 

Patterns that keep pace with the march of fashion 
are bound to be new, and being new the chances are all 
in favor of their being in demand. If they are in 
demand they are supplied in large numbers, in a great 
variety of styles, and this means an able corps of work- 
men and women and the most approved methods of 
draughting the various portions of the pattern. Does it 
not stand to reason that the patterns of such a manufact- 
urer are vastly superior in style and fit to those of the 
maker who creeps along in the trail of fashion instead 
of running in the v^n? 

No woman wishes a gown made in a fashion already 
in common use when the pattern maker selects it. 
Therefore pick out the design of the publisher who gets 
his inspiration, not at second or fifth hand from foreign 
journals printed after Paris dressmakers have started the 
styles around the world, but direct from the Parisian 
artist designers who create the styles. The patterns of 
such manufacturer give you and me the cream of the 
styles for any season before anybody else has them, and 
our gowns lead the fashion, competing with the oracles 
of that quivering heart of fashiondom — Paris — instead of 
copying designs that are months old before the inferior 
patterns of second rate manufacturers get round to them. 
The dressmaker who creates all her own designs — she 
is a rarity in any part of the world. 

No good dressmaker slavishly copies a model. 
Do not make the mistake of measuring the width of 
a plait and its distance from the neck or foot of a dress 
in order to make it conform precisely to the pattern. 

Get the best effect of the drapery or trimming 
regardless of whether it is just like the copy or not. 

Paris dressmakers take great pains with the tout 
ensemble of their dresses ; i. e. with the outlines and the 
general effect. They do not worry over details such as 
whether the strap goes under at the left side and out at 
the right, or vice versa, or trouble themselves about 
similar inconsequential inatters over which American 
9. 



dressmakers spend too much time. 

As a matter of fact, the 'American dressmaker has 
spent much valuable time and hard earned cash in the 
past, on systems. She is now getting beyond the use 
of them and doing her work as the best French dress- 
maker does hers. They say in Paris; — "We do not cut 
dresses, we fit them," showing how little real import- 
ance they attach to cutting. Most dressmakers fail to 
realize the enormous amount of benefit derived from 
each fitting. Not only do you fit milady's dress well, 
but at the same time, unconsciously, you are learning 
all her individualities, and will, by the time you come 
to the trimming, know how to trim without giving it 
much study. 

All of this time and a great deal more can be spent 
to real advantage in studying dress material and linings, 
and the proper linings for different materials, and in 
studying your customers. 

Search out from whatever is fashionable that which 
is destined to makethem look their best, and so rebound 
to your credit, both financially and as a matter of fame. 



F^RESS fitting is not a mathematical problem that 
^—^ can be solved by learning a few rules. Every 
new customer introduces another and frequently very 
refractory figure, making quite a different problem. 
There is no royal or easy road to learning to fit a dress. 
But the best all round guide post to follow is the one 
that directs the dressmaker to make herself mistress of 
the situation and let rules act as humble servants. 
Turn them and twist and manipulate them anyway, 
anyhow, to produce good effects whether anybody ever 
heard of doing the like before, or ever will again, or not. 
American dressmakers are famous for their devotion to 
arbitrary methods, fitting their customers to their 
theories, instead of subjugating theories to suit the 
customer's peculiar needs. 

Parisian dressmakers on the other hand are famous 
for their pooh-poohing of systems. Instead of wasting 
their energies in following hard and fast theories they 
invest their ingenuity and talent in turning out original 
effects. Instead of studying systems they study their 
patrons. It is quite worth while to look at the Parisian 
methods, because Parisian dressmakers annually 
receive thousands upon thousands of dollars which 
American dressmakers ought to have, and which they 
will have-not so soon as they deserve them perhaps, 
but when they prove conclusively by their work, 
that they can outmatch the foreign-made gown at 
every point, 

The Parisian dressmaker laughs at the American 
dressmaker, not without considerable excuse it must be 
admitted, for considering the fit of a dress its chief 
glory. To the Parisian mind the fit is merely a matter 
of course, the real success of the dress lying in its 
beautiful lines, charming combination of color, hand- 
some texture, its success in enhancing the beauty of 
the figure and covering up its defects. The London 
II. 



maker of riding habits prides himself upon the skin- 
fitting qualities of his work, but the Parisian modiste 
considers fit merely part of the skeleton of a dress, 
wholly subordinate to its decorative qualities. 

The American dressmaker who has to be the tailor 
as well as the maker of ball gowns for her neighborhood 
has a distinctly harder task than the specialist who 
confines herself to one branch of the profession, say 
that of making girls' dresses, or morning apparel for 
adults, or dress suitable for sports, or merely tea gowns 
and dinner dresses and other resplendent frocks of their 
ilk. But the dressmaker who is called upon to make all 
manner of dresses will make it easier instead of harder 
for herself, if she learns to appreciate the Parisian point 
of view about dress, which is, that its chief aim to cover 
the body was long, long ago lost sight of in its recognized 
mission today — that of making the wearer look her best. 
The Parisian dressmaker does not care whether she 
takes your last sou or not, but she will not fit a gown 
to you if she considers the style unbecoming, though she 
loses your trade by her refusal. 

• When she has consented to make a dress for you 
she is autocratic to the last degree, but so polite and 
sauve in her autocracy, that you can but rejoice 
in her dominion over you. 

Whether you are her best customer, or a chance 
rover upon the face of the earth whom she never expects 
to see again, she takes as much pains with your order as 
if her reputation hung upon that one dress. Yours 
may be the least important order she has, and she may 
not care a picayune for your few dollars, but she does' n't 
tell 3'ou so; and she does' n't say she is so rushed that 
she does' n't see how in the world she can make your 
dress, and thus forever after fill you with the feeling 
that it was but half made. Not she. If she takes your 
dress to make, she pools all her issues upon satisfying 
herself, and if she does this she is bound to satisfy you, 
because her taste is perfect. 

Why perfect? Because she is forever studying 
to make it so. If the Parisian dressmaker requires your 

12. 



presence for ten fittings, she tells you so and gets them. 
You may think three ought to answer, but, if she thinks 
ten, 3^ou give her ten, or she will not have any. 

She thinks fitting merely a stepping stone to a 
fetching ensemble, but, if she sets out to make the dress 
fit, she fits, and she does it to perfection. Worth 
could'n't bear a plain, smooth, tight-fitting bodice and 
never made one if he could possible help it, but his 
linings fitted like the skin — not like paper on the wall, 
immovably tight, but like skin that is wrinkleless, but 
plays with every motion of the body. 

The Parisian dressmaker will not fit over clumsy 
under-clothing, and her views on corsets ought to be 
adopted by every American woman. The average 
American woman today, if she does not live in the back 
woods, has her gloves and her boots fitted as carefully 
as a dress waist, but she continues, with comparatively 
few exceptions, to buy her corsets by a waist measure. 
The clever dressmaker knows that the majority of 
figures are corset built, that if the corset changes shape, 
so do the figures. It is, then, for her interest to have 
her dresses fitted over corsets that will keep their shape 
to the end of their days. No cheap corset will. It is 
starched into some sort of shape which never fits very 
well. Soon the stiffening lessens, and such shapeliness 
as the corset had, leaves it, with the result that the 
bodice which was fitted over it has, at the end of a few 
times wearing, quite a different figure to fit and, not 
being automatically adjustable, it ceases to fit and the 
dressmaker gets the blame. 

The Parisian dressmaker will not fit a dress over a 
heavy stiff new corset ; neither will a tailor who knows 
his business. They advise you to buy a corset with- 
out any stiffening, save that afforded by the bones and 
steels, and to have this fitted (which is done free at all 
first class houses) as carefully as you would have a glove 
fitted, to be sure that the bust fit is just right ; that of 
the hips ditto ; that the waist is neither too long nor too 
short ; etc. This kind of a corset will fit as well when it 
is threadbare as when it is new, for the shape is in the 
13. 



way it is cut, not in the starch of the cheap corset. 

Another bit of work for the American dressmaker 
who means to pride herself upon having her dresses fit 
as well as they should, is to educate her American 
patrons up to having different corsets for different 
occasions. A Parisian dressmaker will not fit a ball 
gown over a corset suitable for a cloth street dress, 
and the smart London tailor assures Madam that she 
must have a pair of riding corsets to do his habit justice. 

Nobody wishes to drive trade away to one's rivals 
but most women are more amenable to advice than they 
are credited with being, and the dressmaker who makes 
no mention of her point of view (that of not having her 
reputation as a dressmaker ruined) but urges the 
customer for the sake of her appearance to wear a light 
weight, pliable, well made, and accurately fitted corset, 
will find customers more than ready to take advantage 
of the advice. 

The Parisian dressmaker and the London tailor Jit 
their dresses. They do not pull them together and get 
the noticeable wrinkles out, and let them go at that. 
They do not make any attempt to fit carefully, till the 
bodice, when tried on, proves to be a pretty close fit in 
itself. Then the middle back seam is drawn in close to 
the neck well up ; with the hands, the waist is smoothed, 
not jerked into place, and the fronts are pinned, not by 
lapping but by folding the edges together, as if to make 
a standing frill down the front. Many excellent dress- 
makers work down from the shoulders in fitting, but the 
best tailors work up from the waist line, and will tell 
you always to button coats, bodices, and all waists 
from the waist line up. 

On a slender figure, the hems down the front will 
be practically straight, but the full bust must be accom- 
modated by a curve, which makes itself when the fronts 
are drawn together and pinned. The bodices, today, 
nearly all have more or less fanciful fronts, the lining, 
fastening with hooks and eyes which merely bring the 
edges together without lapping. A bias facing is better 
14. 



than a hem on bodices, where there is a curve over the 
bust, the line for the making of either being indicated 
when the fitting has been accomplished. 

It is not a good idea to make more than the first 
trial fitting with the bodice wrong side out. There are 
scarcely two shoulders or two hips just alike, and a 
waist fitted most carefully inside out will be awry when 
tried on where it belongs. After the first trial fitting, 
the Parisian dressmaker asks her customer to sit down 
for a special process that is most useful. Except the 
ball dress and the promenade dress, the average dress 
is worn more in a sitting position than in a standing one. 
Ninety-nine women out of a hundred, sink into them- 
selves more or less in sitting, and a bodice which looks 
pretty well while they are standing, will develop a 
wrinkle across the shoulders when they sit down. 

Half a ^dozen times, perhaps, the Parisian dress- 
maker rips the shoulders apart and presses the material 
in the back, from the top of the side-back form to the 
neck, up, up, till every possibility of wrinkling there is 
dissipated. 

A point in fitting the shoulders, upon which the 
French dressmaker lays great stress, is on no account 
to take more off the back than off the front, when the 
shoulder seams are taken in. Unless. There is the 
usual exception to any rule. If the woman who is being 
fitted, is hollow about the neck in front and the back of 
her neck between the shoulders is plump, then th& 
bodice fits better and looks better, to have the shoulder 
seam moved back a little by taking off the back than 
off the front. 

If the fronts are too wide and wrinkle, she cuts out 
the arm's eye gingerly but, if it is too tight, she runs, 
her finger round and turns the raw edge out, knowing 
that it is going to stretch more or less, and that, if cut„ 
out in the beginning, it will very likely prove in the end,, 
when it is too late, to be too narrow across the front.. 
Many American dressmakers make the mistake of fit- 
ting a dress bodice as if the woman to wear it were a 
15. 



slab of wood, and flat, the same distance from arm to 
arm, both back and front. 

The Parisian dressmaker never gives her customers 
too little room across the bust, a very common fault of 
the native made dress. And she is equally careful not 
to give a vestige too much room across the back. 

If there is a tendency to bag between the shoulders 
and the top of the bodice, rip go the shoulders again, 
and the fulness is pressed and smoothed knd worked up. 
The waist line is the one point that is left undisturbed; 
to displace that would mean ruin. 

After the waist has been fitted not only over, but 
actually into the figure by being worked into every 
curve and line of the upper half of the body, the seams 
are stitched just inside the bastings in all save 
shoulders and under-arm-seams. The bastings that 
hold inside and outside materials together are left in 
till the waist is done, but the bastings in the seams 
are ripped out, and the bones are put in before the last 
fitting is done, all the bones, that is, but those in the 
under-arm seams. The under-arm and shoulder seams 
are left subject to alteration, until after the waist has 
been boned and the fronts supplied with fastenings. 
When wrinkles there are none with the wearer sitting, 
then the shoulder and under-arm seams are stitched, and 
the latter receive their quota of bones. 

The French dressmaker excels in her ability to 
make a dress fit without a wrinkle and not look tight. 
Many home dressmakers can turn out a wrinkleless 
bodice, but how very, very few do not make their 
wearers look like trussed fowls. A bandage of straight 
cloth can be put upon a body so that it will not wrinkle, 
(that is not at once) but it is done by pulling and haul- 
ing and crowding the flesh into it. To fit closely one or 
two layers of material so that one can turn her head, 
lift her arms, make a courtesy, or make any other 
reasonable movement, without having the appearance 
of dislocating some organ of the body, is quite another 
matter. 

16. 



The dressmaker who has a reasonable amount of 
pride in her work, is not content to have a dress look 
pretty well, when it goes home in its pristine glory. 
She wishes it to fit just as well when she sees it weeks 
afterward. But, if it is to do this, it must not be too 
tight anywhere and it must be tight enough every- 
where. 

If the customer is habitually round shouldered, it is 
of no use to straighten her up while you are fitting the 
bodice. Make instead some sort of a variation upon the 
plain bodice that will conceal her bad posture. 

If the material, like some of the rough finished 
serges, will stretch a great deal in wearing, have the 
dress sent back at the end of a dozen times wearing to 
have the fulness that has gathered pinched up and 
taken out from bodice and skirt. It costs you but a 
few minutes of your assistant's time, and secures you 
great credit from all who see your work. 

The sleeve that has the curve for the elbow over the 
bend when the hand is brought to the breast, and the 
inside seam in a line with the thumb when the hand is 
dropped to the side and the back of the hand is toward 
the front, will sit well and not twist. 

Padding is only allowable in habit bodices where 
plainness is de riguer, and even then Norfolk jackets are 
preferable, unless one knows the tailoring trade so 
accurately, that there is no chance of making a bodice all 
hills and hollows — so often done in padding. The 
woman who is so thin as to need padding to make a 
plain bodice presentable will look better in some other 
style that is less severe ; and it is your place to make 
her see the truth of this statement, 

Wire bust forms are not inimicable to health and 
may be recommended with impunity when needed, but 
large ones upon a small figure are inartistic and 
objectionable. Do not allow the use of hair or wool 
bust forms. They are heating, injure the natural figure, 
and do not look natural. The slight hollow just in front 
and under the arms of many woman, is obviated by some 
17. 



good dressmakers by making a small double crescent of 
the lining, filling it with a layer or two of sheet wadding- 
(intersprinkled with orris and violet powder) : this is. 
tacked after the waist is finished where needed under 
the sleeve shields. If these crescents, which should in 
any event be small and graduated toward the edge, are: 
to be worn, the fitting must be done over a trial pair. 
Other dressmakers get rid of the fullness caused by the. 
hollow as described in the talk on Cutting, by taking up- 
a triangle bias in the lining and stretching the outside, 
material without bias over it, their claim being that false- 
plumpness is very apt to show, however carefully 
applied. In general it is safer and more satisfactory in 
point of looks to hide too great slenderness by a differ- 
ent style of dress instead of padding up a shape for a 
a plain one. 

Standing collars will fit closely if the lower edge 
(collars are cut on the bias) is stretched between the 
fingers two or three times. 

.Skirts cannot hang badly if they are fitted by 
shaping the front and side gores, either by goring or 
biases near the waist line so to make every seam hang 
in a vertical line from the waist to the foot. It is twist- 
ing the seams out of line in the fitting that causes most 
of the badly hung skirts. Each seam should represent 
a straight line from top to bottom, curved of course as it 
is carried in at the waist, but not stretched out of line 
by being carried too far back at the top when the belt is 
attached. 

All this goes to prove that the French dressmaker 
knows just what she is talking about when she says that 
there is not much in cutting dresses, but that the test is 
in the fitting. 



i8. 



"T^O claim that there is but one right way of doing 
most things, dressmaking among others, is to 
make an egregious mistake. Every first class dress- 
maker has a way of her own, and, while there is often 
room for improvement upon it according to somebody's 
else way of thinking, it may be the way of all others 
for her. 

But after making all due allowance for your way 
and mine, which, though differing a good deal, gives to 
each of us A-i results, it may be we may both learn 
something from the experience of others who clear of our 
difficulties altogether, or get over them more easily than 
we do. 

It pays to learn that there is a kind of economy that 
in the end is rank extravagance. It pays, for instance, 
to have the proper tools to work with. The table should 
be large enough to spread a skirt breadth on easily, and 
soft enough to trace upon, smooth enough to offer no 
obstacle to the roughest cloth, and heavy enough so that 
it cannot jolt or tip. There should be a chair comfort- 
able enough to sit in before this table, and high enough 
to work from, and a footstool beside. It's a wonderful 
nerve saver, the footstool. Because a man tailor stands 
at his work is no reason at all why a woman should. 
Don't. 

The shears should be sharp, and so should the 
scissors. A paper weight or two is a convenience and 
so is a supply of the thumb tacks such as artists use to 
tack their drawing paper upon boards. The pin cushion 
should be large and well filled ; there should be some 
chalk, a tracing wheel, and needles and basting thread 
galore. 

It pays to prove before wasting good linings whether 
the cutting guide is anywhere near the size required, as 
the inexperienced not infrequently, after the most pains- 
19. 



taking attention to directions, find too late that they 
have slipped up somewhere and the lining is a world too 
big. or hopelessly wrong. The novice, with a new 
pattern or chart does bravely to cut a dummy waist, a 
lining of some cheap stuff, and an outside to go with it, 
though the latter is only unbleached muslin. The 
experimenting she can do freely with this dummy in the 
line of cutting and basting. It will be worth all the 
lessons given in a year in the so-called dressmaking 
schools. 

Many clever dressmakers after fitttng the first lining 
cut from it another, make a memorandum of the pecu- 
liarities of the customer's figure and keep itj on file. 
This makes fitting an easy matter, and her patrons are 
loud in their praises of the ease they have in getting a 
gown that is just right. 

There cannot be a dressmaker anywhere nowadays 
who does not know that the wry forms in close fitting 
bodices are due to the fact that the line representing the 
waist line of each form was not laid parallel with a 
straight thread of the goods running from selvage to 
selvage ; but, judging from the number of wry bodices 
one sees at every turn, someone surely forgets this rule. 

If the material is intended to be on the bias when 
made up, it is not enough to twist it somewhat out of a 
straight line. Bias bodices, skirt breadths, or trim- 
mings, — none of them will sit properly unless they are 
cut exactly on the bias ; this means with all their 
straight edges at an angle of 45 degrees from the selvage, 
and an angle of 45 degrees is one that would run through 
both of the opposite corners of a square the sides of 
which were parallel to the selvages. 

But even observing these points is not enough to 
save all waists from wrinkles. Bear in mind the axiom 
about stretching the outside cloth and letting the lining 
lie "easy" upon it ; this is important in its way. Then 
it is necessary to the best results to know at the outset 
that basting is one of the 30 articles of the creed of the 
leading dressmakers. Most dressmakers think to econo- 
20. 



p 



mise time by basting as little as possible. The way to 
save time in the long run is to baste a great deal, and do 
it in the right way. 

But horrid little wrinkles often put in an appearance 
about the waist or across the back forms after every one 
of the foregoing points has been carefully attended to 
and the bodice has been boned according to the best light 
obtained on that crucial point. 

In your despair, have you ever turned to a first class 
woman's tailor and begged him to enlighten you on the 
subject of his paper fitting bodices that yet are never 
tight looking as so many dressmaker-made waists are? 
True, most tailors guard their secrets as a miser does 
his money, but now and then a friendly one may be 
found. He asks you if you have never heard of the 
woman who returned a gown ordered of a famous tailor 
'•because the inside of the waist was a mass of wrinkles." 

If you are not in the habit of wrinkling the lining in 
your bodicej, have you never wondered why the gowns 
turned out by the leading tailors and dressmakers are 
as the woman in the true story said, "a mass of 
wrinkles," about the waistline on the wrong side? 

The reason for the wrinkled lining in a nutshell is 
this : most dress fabrics stretch more or less. Linings 
are not supposed to stretch at all. The outside material 
is not only stretched somewhat when it is basted, but 
is kept upon the stretch in the seams afterward by the 
bones. Just where the greatest strain comes upon the 
outside material to keep it wrinkleless, a little addi- 
tional room must be afforded it by the lining ; hence 
the few tiny puckers in the lining. If these are omitted, 
it is possible for a very skilful fitter to make the bodice 
smooth upon the outside at the start, but shortly the 
outside will begin to stretch, and, unless there is a little 
leeway in the lining underneath to accomodate this 
lengthening out, the outside will have to collect its 
fulness in puckers where they will show. 

One great curse of American dressmaking is the 
carelessness of the dressmakers about little things of 

21. 



this sort which are really important. They make their 
standard, quantity of work, not quality. The leading 
dressmakers of Paris do not ask how many dresses they 
can turn out in a given time, but how recherche they 
can make each one within the limits of time and money 
afforded them by the customer. 

The cleverest Parisian dressmakers do not pay much 
attention to cutting; they spend themselves on their 
fitting, but they are not fond of plain close fitting bodices 
and most of them make up their pretty, airy, fairy creat- 
ions with an eye to their first effect, and with never a 
thought to their lasting qualities. The tailor builds his 
gowns for long continued and hard wear, and he takes 
oath that no amount of cleverness in fitting can make a 
plain close fitting bodice permanently aufait, unless it 
is correctly cut and basted. Bones are to keep seams in 
order, not to put them there by main strength, he says. 
And further the oracle deposes in this wise, "Every 
part of a bodice should be a law unto itself. It is not 
safe to cut any part double. First, because the under 
side is apt to be thrown out of line and so come out 
awry ; but especially because each portion of the lin- 
ing requires to be especially fitted to the outside material 
and basted there before the outside is cut. Wholesale 
blocking out may do for men's coats, and women's 
aprons, but not for bodices." 

After the lining has been cut, stretch the cloth foi 
the front, right side down upon the table, nap run, 
ning toward the cutter, and fasten the cloth to the 
table by sticking in thumbtacks. Adjust the lining to 
bring the waist line on a straight cross thread, and 
then pin it in place, beginning at the top. Have the 
lining smooth to an inch below the top of the biases, 
then pucker it to tiny wrinkles from there to within 
one half inch of the waist line. Do not plait those 
puckers but hold them between the basting threads. 
Put the pins in slantwise to hold linings firmly and 
baste with fine stitches, putting the needle in each 
time at an angle. Do not turn down the front hems, 

22. 



but leave them to pull the waist together with in fit 
ting. Do not baste on the indicated tracing lines on 
the lining for the stitching but a trifle inside the 
tracing. 

Wrinkle the lining on the under-arm form, a half 
inch both above and below the waist line on both sides 
of the form, and wrinkle the side-back form in the same 
way but only on the side that is to come next the back, 
Do not stretch the cloth for the side back form in pin- 
ning it to the table, this form being already on the bias, 
more or less. 

For the back of the bodice, allow the lining to lie 
"easy" all over the stretched material beneath, and 
baste thus, but do not wrinkle the cloth anywhere. 

Do not be afraid of basting too much, or of taking 
too much pains with the positions of the basting. This 
is half the battle for a perfect fitting waist. Baste 
through the centre of the biases lengthwise, and across 
the waist line of each form. In basting the form., 
together, begin with the waist line. Match this in each 
of the two portions that come together, then pin from 
this point up, and from the waist line down, and baste 
on the tracing line for the stitching. 

Cut the biases open and jom the indicated tracings 
for stitching, paying no further attention to the traced 
waistline. In joining the side-back form to the back, hold 
the side-back uppermost both in basting and in stitching. 
Do not stretch the curve in basting, but in stitching see 
that though not stretched, still, that the seam is not 
puckered at all. The proper shoulder seam is a straight 
slant with the front a little shorter than the back. 
Stretch the front to fit the back and baste thus. The 
stretching will curve the front a little, and make it fit 
the hollow in the shoulder underneath. 

Where the outside is to show but four seams, one on 
each shoulder and one under each arm, the material 
should be cut on the bias, if it is designed to have it fit 
smoothly. If it is to be fulled or plaited a trifle at the 
waist line, back and front, it can be cut straight way of 
23. 



the clotli. In any case the lining should be as carefully 
fitted as for the usual many seamed bodice. 

The French bias is a stroke of genius for fitting the 
fronts of dress waists, and may be employed by those 
who cut by paper patterns as well as by those who can 
manipulate the most complicated charts. The French 
bias merely cuts the second bias at a different angle than 
that usually outlined in the ordinary paper patterns, 
thus bringing the cloth between the second bias and the 
under-arm seam on the bias, conducing to a better fit 
in that troublesome region. Many dressmakers always 
use the French bias even in the linings of bodices that 
are cut whole upon the outside. The accomplished cut- 
ters by chart understand about draughting the French 
bias. Those who cut direct from paper patterns that 
do not have this bias can make it for themselves. Cut 
through the second bias, (the farthest from the front) 
from top to bottom. About two inches from the line of 
perforations indicating the under arm seam measuring 
on the curve for the arm, make a mark, and draw a line 
from it to the top of the bias you have just cut through 
the middle. Now draw a second line from the same point 
(at the top of the bias) back to the arm curve to a point an 
inch farther along, that is to say three inches from the 
under arm seam perforations. The pencil marks now 
give a triangle resting on the arm curve, with the apex 
at the top of the second bias. Fold the sides or pencil 
lines together and pin or paste or baste ; this swings the 
lower portion of the waist pattern between the under 
arm seam and the second bias, over to the left (or toward 
the right if it be the other front), so that the pattern lies 
upon the cloth on the bias instead of straightway. The 
little angle taken out of the arm curve rids the .fitter of 
a troublesome fulness there, where most figures are 
hollow. Of course it is not desirable to take up any- 
thing on the arm curve from the outside material, and 
it is, therefore, stretched smooth to fit the lining. If the 
figure is full instead of hollow in front of the arm, simply 
cut the arm curve out a little to make up for the room 
24. 



that is borrowed in the triangle 1)135. 

The chief things to remember about cutting dress 
skirts are not to stretch gored edges, and to make 
allowance for the way in which the intended wearer 
habitually carries herself. She is likely to take what is 
for her an unnaturally upright pose in standing to be fitted, 
and, if she usually stands and walks with weight on 
heels, abdomen forward, and hips thrown to the front, 
letting the best made skirt down at the back and up in 
front, allowance must be made for this melancholy fact 
in cutting. 

Very sleazily woven goods should be overcast as 
soon as cut to prevent fraying and stretching, both 
bodice and skirt forms. All thin goods should have a 
thread run about the arm's eyes to prevent their stretch- 
ing out of shape. 

It is of great importance to have the outside ma- 
terial and all the linings for every part of all dresses cut 
upon corresponding threads of the goods. 

Unless this is done the strain of wearing falls in one 
way upon the outside fabric and in another way upon 
the inside lining, and in another upon the under lining, 
and the dress hangs badly, sits badly, and wears 
badly. Facings and linings for the skirts should be 
fitted exactly in cutting to the shape of the breadths 
and weaving of the outside, and linings should be just as 
precisely fitted to the outside of bodices. 

In handling velvet and all exquisite fabrics use a 
piece of soft clean old cheese cloth as a foil. Basting 
threads and pin thrusts mar velvet, and should be used 
only where their trail will afterward be hidden. Vel- 
vet seams must be practically hand sewed. If machine 
stitching is used, every inch of the seams must be guard- 
ed to prevent the pile of one edge slipping past that of 
the opposite one, so that when finished the edges of the 
seam will look like a miniature field of wheat through, 
which somebody has strolled, With a needle or some- 
smooth instrument press the pile back from the edge in 
sewing, so that instead of flattening it down between. 
25. 



the edges of the seam, it shall be forced back and thus 
stand up partially hiding the seam when the dress is 
finished. It is in such points as that the dressmaker 
"must use her head." 

No one's eyes should be so critical of her work 
as her own, and when anything goes astray or 
"a'gley," she should fathom the trouble and correct it. 

Sleeves are now made "forty ways for Sunday," 
but it is rarely the exception that those do not sit best 
that are cut so as to bring a straight thread of the 
goods between the middle of the elbow and the middle of 
the top of the sleeve at the shoulder. This throws the 
part of the sleeve below the elbow upon the bias and 
produces the best fitting forearm sleeve. 

Women whose figures are out of proportion must 
have special accommodations devised for them. A page 
of rules and suggestions might be laid down, and the 
next patron who happened along would very likely 
defy them all. 

A dummy lining is the best aid to the dressmaker 
in experimenting in cutting for great perculiarity or de- 
formity of figure. Do not be afraid of taking exceptions 
to rules, or of inventing new methods to suit the case in 
hand, whether it is to take a V out of the arm's eye at 
the back, to fit the very round-shouldered woman, or to 
insert one over the bust in front, to suit the very large 
woman. 

Make the dummy lining fit though it has biases all 
over it, then cut the lining by it, and adjust the outside 
to make it as becoming as possible. Never allow a de- 
formed woman to wear a severely plain bodice. 

Economize cloth in cutting, but be a spendthrift 
with ideas and basting. 



AIT" HEN it comes to making, the actual sewing and 
" ^ finishing, the American dressmaker has nothing 
to learn from any one. First class American dress- 
makers turn out the best work, so far as the mechanics 
of dressmaking go, of any dressmakers in the world. 
In point of fact, they make dresses too well. They 
might with advantage to themselves, and with no dis- 
advantage to their patrons, unlearn something about 
sewing, and let some of the fussy details, over which 
they now bother their heads to very little purpose, go 
by default. 

Doubtless, a riding habit cannot be too well made. 
There is not a superfluous inch of material about it and, 
probably, it cannot be too well sewed, or too carefully 
finished. But the A-i American dressmaker puts too 
much fine sewing into her dresses. They look well; 
they look about as well on the wrong side as upon the 
right side ; perhaps if they were not such marvels of 
patience in the inside finishing, they might be more 
artistic to look at on the outside. Look at even the 
highest priced foreign made dresses ; by comparison, 
they seem almost slovenly in workmanship, compared 
with American dresses, but after all to what end put 
such an infinite amount of pains into the finishing off of 
a dress that, nowadays, is worn but a few times. The 
riding habit that lasts its last thread out, may be made 
as well as possible, and even the heavy cloth street 
dress demands considerable detail of finishing to make 
it pass muster and stand its hard usage, but house 
dresses and evening dresses might be slighted in finish- 
ing just as the Parisian dressmakers slight them 
without suffering an iota in looks or wearing possi- 
bilities, and with a notable saving in time and trouble. 
A good many American dressmakers are martyrs 

27. 



to fine stitches out of a mistaken regard for the unim- 
portant part of their work. Nobody desires to return 
to the pretty ugly sewing of our great grandmothers' 
days, when their hand-made gorgeous brocades were 
not only not very carefully finished on the inside, but 
were not particularly well sewed on the outside. Oh, 
I know their sewing was held up as a fetish to our 
childish understandings, but look over a collection of 
their most splendid clothes preserved in any museum, 
and take courage. 

The Parisian dressmaker is clever. She knows 
every trick in putting her work where it will make the 
most show. So long as she gets the effect she 
wants, and it stays as long as long as it is required, 
which is not long, for instance, in a tulle party frock, 
she doesn't try to make the sewing in every part of the 
sort that would win a prize at a school exhibition. The 
Parisian Milliner long, long ago found that she could 
get effects by pinning on her hat and bonnet trimmings 
that absolutely defied sewing, and the Parisian dress- 
maker will catch a flounce of lace here and a ribbon 
there with fascinating grace, and never bother her head 
about how it looks on the wrong side. Why should 
she? 

There is a chance for American dressmakers who 
have spoiled American customers by over precision of 
finish upon the wrong side of dresses, to introduce a 
change by quoting the example of the most influential 
of the Paris modistes ; they might offer to make a dress, 
for a given sum, that shall be neat on the under side, 
but not sewn with a microscope ; or one finished mic- 
roscopically as to sewing for a certain additional sum. 
This would win the day and offend nobody. It is high 
time that American dressmakers learned some of the 
Parisian tricks. 

For the necessary multiplicity of detail in making 

the simplest dress after it is cut and basted and fitted, 

the following suggestions are based upon the points 

that many dressmakers have not yet learned to follow 

28. 



or avoid, as the case may be. 

In the matter of seam stitching, it pays to use the 
best quality of silk for everything but wash goods. 
The waist seams should he sewed with fine stitches 
that lock in the middle. For stitching skirts, the stitch 
should be lengthened to double the length. Skirt seams 
do not have the strain of bodice seams, and sit better 
if the long stitch is employed. All seams should be 
stretched to the full extent of their straight edge in stitch- 
ing, as the seam passes under the machine presser foot. 

Large dressmaking establishments employ special- 
ists, one who does nothing but cut and fit, or several 
who cut and fit exclusively ; sometimes even the cut- 
ters and fitters are different individuals ; then there are 
workwomen who make waists exclusive of sleeves; 
others who do nothing but make and trim sleeves; 
others are skirt makers. The buttonholes are made by 
someone else, and so on and so on. The average dress- 
maker must combine all these specialities in her single 
grasp, and her task at best is not an easy one ; however 
she can do it, and must. 

The dressmaking establishment with which she 
must compete, has a man tailor to make all the jackets 
and waistcoats for its outing suits, and its dressmakers 
coolly if wittily say that a dressmaker who attempts 
to make coats and vests should be arrested for mal- 
practice. 

Perhaps the dressmaker who doesn't know how to 
make a coat or a vest should be, but it often happens 
that the dressmaker is an all round able woman who 
can do everything in her line and do it pretty well. 

If she aspires to be something of a tailor as well as 
a dressmaker, or even to be a very good dressmaker, 
she must learn that tailors call their pressing irons 
their best friends. 

It isn't enough to iron; dresses must be pressed, 

by main strength. Many goods ought not to be ironed, 

that is to say, they cannot with impunity stand having 

irons pushed into their texture enough to stretch it out. 

29. 



Pressing from above downward, not along in a line, 
is the sort of pressing seams and binding, etc. require. 
Do not iron seams flat along upon the surface. The 
edges of the open seams will show on the right side ten 
times out of ten. A common place but efficacious way 
of pressing seams to look well, is to open them over the 
rounding edge of an ironing board, and allow the iron 
to touch only the centre of the seam. The edges of the 
seam will then not be outlined upon the goods. Velvet 
requires to be pressed with infinite painstaking. An iron 
covered with a damp cloth and set upon end, over the 
point of which the velvet seam is carried is one method. 
Another is to open the velvet over the rounding edge 
above referred to, which is to be covered with coarse and 
very soft flannel into which the pile can sink without 
being flattened out. 

The custom of binding seams with lute string 
instead of overcasting them gives an adorably neat 
finish, and many good dressmakers, by cutting the edges 
of the seams into scollops before they are bound, succeed 
in producing a waist that fits very well. But the best 
Paris dressmakers do not bind their seams. They over- 
cast them. Their claim is that no matter how many 
scollops are made in the seams, or how loosely the lute 
string ribbon is folded over the edge, still the ribbon 
binds more or less. The overcast edge gives in wearing 
to fit the strain on the bodice, and readily adjusts itself 
to the figure. Open every seam, even to the curved 
sideback seams, and bone every one, except the shoulder 
seam, and if the bodice is a close fi,tting bodice as in a 
habit bodice and some others, put an extra bone between 
the second bias and the first underarm seam. 

Bones are not intended to fit the seams to the 
wearer, but merely to keep fitted seams on the stretch, 
therefore the careful, wise dressmaker fits every bone to 
the seam it is to occupy, curving some merely at the 
waist and over the hips, if they go over the hips ; and 
others, as in the side-back seams, to follow the side 
curve of the seam. It is a very easy process, 
30. 



requiring only that the bones shall lie in warm water 
for some time, and be shaped over a warm flat iron. 
While damp a hole should be bored through each end 
and twice between, one point being at the waist line to 
facilitate keeping the bone in place in the casing. 

Because of the care with which first-class dress- 
makers and tailors bone bodices, it is easy to see why 
none of the patent steels and other contrivances ready 
to be applied by paste or a few stitches caty cornered 
are used in well made gowns. The very best quality 
of whale bone is only just good enough. 

Bone castings should be puckered decidedly full 
about the waist line, and full but less so all the way. 

The fullness makes of each casing a pocket, into 
which the bone sinks, putting the seam above it upon 
the stretch, while the bone drops away from it into the 
easier bed, and thus prevents the "rubbing" of the seams 
upon the right side of a bodice, always in evidence 
sooner or later where the bones are pressed into the 
seam by a tight plain casing. 

The bones should reach from the bottom of the 
bodice, or so far as it is designed to fit closely, (the full 
skirts of a blouse being of course a possible exception) to 
within an inch of the top of the corset at the back and 
side-back. Under the arms the bones must stop short 
at least a trifle below the corset, and, while in front they 
may reach nearly but not quite to the top of the biases, 
they should not be attached to any seam within an inch 
and a half of the top of the bone. The best casing is a 
narrow galoon with selvage edges. The upper end 
should be loose from the seams for a half inch at least, 
and folded and sewed double, to make a sort of hood in 
which the bone can play. If sewed to the seam to the 
very end, they soon wear the dress into holes and show 
at all times. Two or three strong stitches should be 
taken through the holes previously bored, from each 
side of the seam, to prevent the bone twisting on its side 
as it will otherwise do, and also to keep the seam well 
distributed over it, instead of allowing it to crawl along 
31. 



to rid itself of the strain upon it. 

If an extra bone is put in between the second bias 
and the under arm seam, it is covered, and set diagonally 
between the two, ending on the seams, and is cat- 
stitched to the lining only. It should be cut a half inch 
longer than the space it fills, so that it bows out slightly 
when fastened at each end. When the bodice is in posi- 
tion, the bow sinks toward the figure, straightens itself 
somewhat, and puts the outer material on the stretch as 
desired to keep it from wrinkling, as it is apt to do 
over full figures. 

A heavy dress or one that is to be worn a good deal, 
and all dresses with close fitting bodices for large 
women, in addition to the whalebones down the 
front, should be provided with one of the flap, kid 
covered corset side steels which can be bought by the 
pair for a few cents. The best way of adjusting this 
steel is to slip it into a pocket made in a double flap of 
silk, or any lining material in accord with the dress. 
Attach the flap at one side, so as to bring the bone just in 
the centre when the dress is fastened ; it takes the strain 
off the slighter whalebones, helps to keep a too prom- 
inent abdomen from ruining a bodice and the flap 
answers as a fly under the opening. The steel reaches 
from the bottom of the bodice as high as it will go, which 
is just below the bust. 

A belt of non-elastic webbing fastened at the waist 
on the three back seams is a necessity in a bodice. The 
Parisian dressmaker makes this belt noticeably tighter 
than the outside of the waist in order to keep the bodice 
from "riding up" in the back. American dressmakers 
to prevent skirts sagging have latterly attached these 
belts pretty generally to skirts by means of hooks and 
eyes at the back. 

The Paris dressmaker refuses to use them, saying 
that in every case they give to the waist a strained look 
up and down the back, and pull the skirts up in the mid- 
dle of the back. She prevents the skirt's sagging by mak- 
ing the waist band tighter than we do, and directly under 
32. 



the back breadth attached to the lower edge of the 
waist band, she puts a little cushion of curled hair to fill 
in the too pronounced hollow that nearly every back has 
nt that point. 

Facings for the inner side of the bottom of bodices 
and sleeves should be of silk always, and on the bias. 
The facings sit better if the edges are turned in and they 
are hemmed down in long hemming stitched instead of 
being run on. and turned up and felled down. 

The neck should be faced and felled down neatly, 
and the collar should be finished separately then blind 
stitched in place. Where hooks and eyes are used to 
fasten the fronts, use the common small hooks and eyes, 
and sew them on alternately, first a hook and then an 
eye down each side. This insures their staying fastened 
which they will not do if all the hooks are on one side 
and the eyes on the other. To prevent hooked fronts 
yawning set all the eyes even with the edge and all the 
hooks in a quarter of an inch, so that a line drawn 
from top to bottom touching each hook and eye would 
he slightly zig-zag. Hem facings down over them after 
the hooks and eyes are sewed strongly to the finished 
edge made by turning the edges of the outside and lining 
in toward each other, the front whalebones being 
pocketed between. 

It is a good idea to strengthen the arm's eyes in 
delicate fabrics in which the linings are also delicate in 
texture by stitching a narrow bias strip of lining about 
the seam. Overcast sleeve seams separately, and 
overcast arm's eye seams with edges together and as 
narrow as compatible with strength. 

Braided gowns, those that have applied trimmings 
snch as galoons, '"passementeries, etc., should have a 
lining of crinoline or canvas under the portion of the 
cloth bearing the trimming. 

Facings of canvas or crinoline in skirts that are 

not lined throughout should be seamed separately, have 

the seams pressed open, and turned toward the dress 

when applied. A dress that is to be worn on the 

33. 



street will outwear more than one binding ; therefore 
it makes it easier for the repairer if the skirt is finished 
completely before the binding of braid or velveteen is 
applied. It is only necessary to turn raw edges in toward 
each other and fell the lining upon the outside just 
above the edge of the latter as it folds onto the under 
side of the skirt. Bindings put on as a piping look and 
wear better than when applied as a binding. 

Hemming especially upon Henrietta, Lansdown — 
any of the fine wools, should be done with short needle- 
fuls of split silk. It makes a much better looking hem 
to use a medium sized silk split, than the finest silk 
whole, the latter being twisted and more or less hard. 
It takes but a few minutes to split the silk for all the 
hemming on any dress and well repays the slight extra 
bother. Never hem selvages; snip them at intervals 
and turn them under or cut them off. No amount of 
pressing will prevent a hemmed selvage puckering. The 
skirt opening in the middle of the back should be on the 
under edge of plaits or gathers, and should have a 
safety hook and eye for fastening half way down. 

Small wire rings through which to run puckering 
strings are better than tapes. Where lace or tulle is to 
be gathered run on one or more rows of the narrow 
lace "taste" sold for the purpose which is merely a 
succession of eyelets with a thread or two on each side 
for the stitching to hold it in place. 

Skirt bands are wrinkled strings before they are 
worn thrice. In place of them " pipe" the the tops of 
skirts with a small cord, the cover of the same being 
felled down upon the under side. Silk looks well but 
cotton surah or something of that nature lies almost as 
flat and wears longer. However, this cannot be done if 
the skirt is to be worn with a round waist ; in that case, 
use a real belt tape — it is fiat and stiff enough not to 
wrinkle. 

The leading dressmakers not only send dresses 
home complete to the ribbons in the sleeves, shields 
under the arms, tiny sachets of powder under them (if 
34. 



the crescent be not used for fitting purposes,) in packing 
boxes long enough to take the skirt without folding, and 
with the shoulders of the bodice plumped out with tissue 
paper to prevent wrinkles in transit ; but every dress 
sent home is supplied with a wooden "shoulder" to 
hang it upon and a skilful needlewoman is sent up to 
see that the customer upon trying her gown on finds it 
just right. 

After the most careful last fitting, sometimes, a 
simple error or oversight will leave something quite 
wrong, and to discover this, just when one has barely 
time to dress, is an aggravation that makes the most 
patient patron " damn" her dressmaker with anything 
but "faint praise." 

The delicate little attention of these final touches 
helps to make a dressmaker lauded to the skies, and 
costs but a trifle which she receives back forty fold. 



?5 



Dri^ss (Joods. 

JP VERY season for the past half dozen years the 
general verdict has been that, at last, manufact- 
urers must have reached the limit of possibility in 
beautiful weaving, charming combinations, and lovely 
coloring as regards dress goods. But each succeeding 
season every body — including the manufacturers them- 
selves — has been astonished and pleased by still other 
and more fascinating novelties. 

Silk, wool, and cotton — these three divisions still 
include all the wealth of dress fabrics known, and 
there are no new colors in the world. But the variety of 
shading possible in the seven primary colors, plus the 
limitless possibilities in combining them is infinite, 
apparently. And out of cotton, wool, and silk, ingenuity 
manages to devise without end novelties that have all 
the practical virtues of being new under the sun although 
when reduced to their lowest terms they prove to be 
related to very old fashioned fabrics. 

There really appears to be a different texture and a 
special shade of color for every woman in the world, 
and yet three quarters of all women seem bent upon 
having just what the other quarter selects. The woman 
who knows of her own free will what she wants is not 
common, and the woman who knows what she ought to 
have is positively rare. 

The dressmaker is appealed to over and over again 
for advice. If she aspires to satisfy all the demands 
made upon her she must not only be an artist in making 
clothes, but she must be a bureau of information about 
the dry goods trade. In addition she is supposed to 
have a brain large enough to remember all the foibles 
and fads of all her customers, and a heart sensitive and 
loving enough to bathe each one in sympathy for all the 
troubles and trials to the unbosoming of which the 
36. 



fitting of a dress somehow leads. 

It certainly does " take it out of a body " to endeavor 
to live up to these requirements, but, if one means to hit 
only the weather vane, she is more likely to do so by 
aiming at the stars than if she fires at the barn door. 
It pays to be all that is asked of one. The dressmaker 
who succeeds in knowing everything from the dry goods 
market a season ahead, to how to dress a scarecrow so 
that she will look eqally well in a bathing suit and a 
skating dress, has her hands full, but so has anybody 
who means to compass all there is of success to be had. 
It pays. It pays in money, and more than that it pays 
in fame. 

It pays for the dressmaker to respect herself and her 
profession. If she does both, and if her knowledge of 
the art of dressmaking is in proportion, she can present 
her bills for work done with as much dignity and sense of 
their justice as can the lawyer, the artist, or the architect. 
The custom is increasing among city dressmakers 
of making one or more trips abroad each year, and 
importing goods and models to fill individual orders; 
also that of importing from choice lines of fabrics (and 
keeping on hand) for which customers can select exclusive 
novelties. There is considerable profit accruing to the 
dressmaker from these purchases if she be a 
skilful buyer. There are forty out-of-town dress- 
makers who make periodical trips to shopping 
centres now where there was one a few years ago, 
and the number of dressmakers who buy all linings 
and furnishings for the dress, if not the material also for 
each of the gowns they make, increases rapidly. 
There are compensations for taking this trouble. By 
buying a quantity of linings at once, the dressmaker 
can earn a commission for herself, can get better mater- 
ials to work with, and can give better satisfaction to her 
patrons, than if each one of them bought a small 
amount of the things in question for herself. Another 
reason why it is a good thing for the dressmaker to 
become a purchasing agent, if not an importer for her 
37. 



customers, lies in the fact that it takes the dressmaker 
out of her sewing room where she is in danger of 
becoming a slave to her shears and tape measure, 
carries her to the fashion centres, keeps her in touch 
with the world, and really rests her by a change of occu- 
pation. If one cannot go to Paris and London it is 
possible to identify one's self with the customers of a 
leading Metropolitan house or houses, to become 
acquainted with the buyers, and thus to see the sample 
books of new things each season weeks before they are 
placed upon the counters. This gives one a chance to be 
the oracle of her neighborhood. 

But an oracle has to be very wise in this day and 
generation. There is next to nothing that it will not be 
for her direct or indirect advantage to know. 

Chief among the knowledge of materials that the 
dressmaker should have at her finger ends, is the possi- 
bilities and limitations in the manner of treating 
different textures. This is the foundation of a great 
part of the success of French gowns. The utter lack of 
careless disregard of this knowledge is at the base of 
the failure of the majority of native-made dresses in 
this country. 

The Parisian dressmaker reserves one style of 
handsome design exclusively for magnificent brocades 
that are so they require no trimming and are so beau- 
tiful in their own pattern that they must be made 
up with long flowing lines to display the material itself. 
An American dressmaker is painfully apt to see and 
admire the design of such a dress, and make one like 
it for some one of her patrons substituting for the heavy 
rich fabric that would almost stand alone, some fluffly, 
flimsy stuff that in justice to itself should be draped. 

Parisians introduced stiffened skirt linings to extend 
their cloth skirts, and for a season now they have been 
holding up their hands in horror over the spectacle of 
American-made gowns of pretty soft, dainty fluttering 
silks stretched into board-like sweeps by horse hair such 
as they had found desirable for heavy cloths. 
38. 



The American dressmaker is too meek. She will 
take any kind of an order fearing to offend a customer 
by refusing. It would be a feather in her cap in the 
end, if she refused to throw away her work upon un- 
worthy models. 

To compete with La Parisenne the American dress- 
maker must learn to perfection the handling required to 
show various dress goods at their best. The best 
handling for India silk is not the best for ladies' cloth, 
nor is the treatment proper for f oule at all the thing for 
cloth of silver, or rich moire antique. 

It is not enough either to know that superb brocade 
trims itself, and that applied ornament, save as a 
jeweled border or lace for the neck aud arms, is an im- 
pertinence. The dressmaker who understands the art 
of dressmaking will not make up a material suitable 
only for a dowager for a girl of eighteen, or vice versa. 

The American dressmaker is fertile in resources 
and has a wonderful fund of tact. Let her but exercise 
these, and the most captious patron will melt at once 
under the illuminating advice of the dressmaker as to 
what to buy and how to make it. 

The dressmaker who knows her business thoroughly 
keeps herself posted in dry goods trade matters as well 
as in designs for dresses. The big shops have one 
buyer for laces and another for trimmings; one for 
wools and another for silks ; in short, a specialist for 
each department. It need not be set down that the 
dressmaker who must know something of everything 
from button hole twist to wedding veils, cannot be 
expected to know all there is to know of all the details 
of the business from which she draws her supplies. But, 
if she subscribes to fashion journals that keep her 
posted in advance upon all matters connected with 
dress, she will know a great deal before a good many 
people find it out. 

For example the retail shops are flooded with 
Vandyke laces. But the dressmaker who is up in the 
trend of the dry goods trade does not advise her patrons 
39. 



to t)uy Vandyke points. She has learned that they are 
"popular," yes; but they are no longer worn by the 
most fashionably dressed woman aoroad. New designs 
are forthcoming from the lace manufacturer, and 
dealers who have a lot of Vandyke points on hand are 
endeavoring naturally to make you and me think they 
are all the rage in order to work off their superfluous 
stock. If one finds a really beautiful piece at a real 
" bargain" in price there is every reason for picking it 
up to use where it will not be over conspicuous, as upon 
a house gown ; but nobody wishes to buy for a street 
dress or one that is to be worn in public anything that 
is bound to become very common because the bottom 
is falling out of the price, owing to the lapse from style 
of the article in question. 

The American dressmaker must study more. 

The nomenclature of dry goods changes from season 
to season, but no one needs to pay much attention to 
names except the merchant who uses them for facility 
in filling orders. The dressmaker cares little whether 
the wool is woven slanting and is called diagonal, or in 
waving lines and is named corkscrew. The thing that 
she is concerned with is whether it has a hard twist and 
is going to wear shiny quickly ; whether it is really all 
wool ; or whether there is cotton in it to turn it shabby in 
a short time. Dressmakers have gone on recommending 
dark serge for summer traveling dresses till the ghosts 
of there victims who have worn their fingers out brush- 
ing it will surely rise and haunt them someday. For 
winter wear serge is admirable. For summer it is too 
hot, and catches dust, especially the prettier English 
rough finished serge, in a manner quite awful to behold. 
The dressmaker who first had the courage to say the 
truth about serge received the blessings of every woman 
who heard of her. 

It doesn't matter whether I have an all-over crinkled 
cr8pe wool or not, if it is to be interlined, and the inter- 
lining is to be seamed up with it, but the wise dress- 
maker will warn me against having an "all-over," if 
40. 



ttiere is to be but one lining and that seamed separately, 
because, after I have worn the dress a few times, it will 
have sagged below the lining, and will look weary and 
sad, and so shall I. She, being wise, will save me and 
herself annoyance by advising me to take the crinkles 
with plain supporting threads between. 

She will advise me that there are English dyes and 
German dyes and French dyes, and that, if I am pick- 
ing out an all black toilet, I ought to select all blacks of 
the same dye, for one wears green, and one gray, and 
one yellow, and my gown and hat and coat will look 
passe long before they should, and long before they 
would, if the blacks were alike and wore to the same tone. 

I may not know, but my dressmaker should, that 
English crape for mourning is better in quality when 
sold in the roll than when folded, and that the rough 
side ought to be put next the dress to give it something 
to cling to, and that the smooth side ought to be turned 
out so that it will not catch dust and threads ; and fhat 
if the crape is applied to silk or some smooth surface it 
should be lined before being put on with a thin rough 
black cloth that it may have the support it requires in 
wide folds to keep it in place. 

If I do not know any better than to buy cheap and 
poor silk just because it is "warranted every thread 
silk," it would be a beneficent action on the part of my 
dressmaker to tell me, that " all silk" silk very low in 
price is made up of either very poor silk or very short 
ends and that either one is not worth making up. The 
wise dressmaker knows that most of the high priced 
novelties at the beginning of the season are no better, so 
far as the grade of the silk or cotton or wool goes, than 
many that are much cheaper, the advanced price being 
to cover the oddity in weaving, or unusualness in some 
other particular. If she wishes to deserve my gratitude, 
she will advise me against buying these, unless I 
can have endless changes of toilet, because they are not 
enough better in grade to make it worth my while to 
afford them, — I who can have but few dresses, — when 
41. 



'they are new ; and, when at the end of the season they 
are cheap, they are pronounced enough to look bizzarre, 
and so much more out of style than something less 
noticeable. 

It is an excellent idea to find out the differences 
between leading foreign and American productions. It 
assists greatly in buying to know that in fancy silks 
France leads ; that American black silks are so good 
France imports some of them; that plain, colored 
American silks are admirable ; that staple, plain wools 
are good here at home, but that for novelties the foreign 
manufacturers whose designers and colorers have been 
in the business from generation to generation, excel us. 
The Paisley coloring in some of the Scotch mixtures, for 
example, is something that we here cannot duplicate ; at 
least we have not done so yet. 

It pays to know that the prettiest brocaded fancy 
linings are a delusion and a snare for anything but 
capes. They are not firm enough for bodices or skirts. 
The very best possible lining for any dress is one of 
silk. It adds something to the cost of the dress, but it 
adds a great deal more to the style of the dress. It has 
with all its thinness, a firmness and a body that nothing 
else has. A silk bodice lining does not wear as long as 
a fine silesia lining, and, in some of the dresses that cost 
even two or three hundred dollars and have an all siik 
skirt lining, the bodice is lined with silesia where 
the dress, as in the case of a cloth street dress, is to be 
subjected to hard wear. 

Taffeta is the best silk for lining, and when it cuts 
out about the foot, a facing of cotton surah and a silk 
balayeuse will make it strong and presentable again. 

Percaline is totally unfit for the very wide skirts, well 
as it answered the purpose in cheap dress when sheath 
skirts were in vogue, as it collapses in yards of addit- 
ional weight about the feet. Lawn or paper cambric 
is the only suitable lining for summer silk dresses, 
where silk cannot be afforded. Stiff interlinings are al- 
ready passe in Paris in all gowns save as facings about 
42. 



the foot. These facihgs should range from ten to four- 
teen inches according to the height of the wearer. The 
break in so many skirts when the wearer steps is due to 
the carelessness or ignorance of the dressmaker who put 
in a facing as deep for the short woman as the tall 
woman. 

A dressmaker may make a good gown and not 
know gro8 de Londres from ombre mousseline pa^se by 
name. But the gown will not amount to much, unless 
she recognizes the essential difference in the materials 
and designs the dress accordingly. She can be a pretty 
good dressmaker and not leave town once in a year, nor 
know whether batiste or peau de soie is the correct thing 
for a golfing costume, till she reads a description of one. 

But, the dressmaker who keeps herself posted on the 
dry goods market and new styles, and knows them from 
A to Z when they are new and fresh, is the dressmaker 
who is not going to miss getting anything that is worth 
having. 



43. 



1r\m\T)(§S, Ca(:(?5, purs, ^tc. 

/^^NE of the differences between good dressmaking 
^"'^ and poor dressmaking is the tendency on the 
part of the latter to over-elaboration, and meaningless 
design. The home-made hat and bonnet are nearly 
always over-trimmed. The home-made dress and the 
gown made by the professional dressmaker who is a 
novice incline the same way. 

Half the dresses that are meant to be attractive 
combination gowns look like nothing so much as patch- 
work, and two thirds of all dresses, instead of having a 
governing motive enhanced by the decoration, are but 
collections of more or less handsome materials put to- 
gether without ryme, reason, or art. 

Of course, there is nobody left who does not know 
that the province of trimming is to ornament, but no- 
body will deny that the greater part of all the trimming 
to be seen looks as if it had been cut off the material for 
the sake of sewing it on again, and rarely as if it had 
been applied by the hand of an intelligent directing 
being carrying out a definite idea of her own or of some- 
body's else. 

One of the commonest designs in dresses were first 
made is that giving the effect of one dress opening 
over another. Where there are not actually two robes 
the idea is furthered by having a separate petticoat, or 
skirt panels ; a waistcoat, or perhaps there are but a 
chemisette and cuffs to carry out the idea of an under- 
dress. 

The idea is a pleasant one to the eye, but half the 
time the design is spoiled by the silly way in which it is 
put into effect. Suppose for example that the inner robe 
is white and the outer one black ; it would be quite the 
proper thing to have black revers turning away from 
the white chemisette faced with white, or to have cuffs 

44. 



of the black turned back faced with white ; or to have 
puffings of the white show through slashes in the black 
sleeve ; but to set a puff of white on the outside that has 
no connection with the supposed inner robe, at once gives 
a mixed up look to the dress that is fatal. Have some 
plan, some motion in combining goods. 

An unobtrusive fabric, however simple, so that it be 
good of the kind, will, if made up aristically.pass muster 
among much handsomer materials ; but once add to it 
some cheap trimming and its poorness, in contrast to the 
other iine gowns about it, is thrown into positive poverty. 
The simple dress of itself, so long as it does not trans- 
gress auj' law of beauty, might have been chosen by a 
simple taste out of sheer preference for its simplicity ; 
but attempt to trim it up with poor trimming, and it is 
stamped at once as poverty stricken from necessity, not 
plain from preference. 

On the other hand, trimmings should not be too 
splendid for the materials they are to adorn, nor incon- 
gruous. Fashion's leading tailor can put a mohair braid 
on a cloth street dress and ask two hundred dollars for 
it with impunity ; but he could get fifty more as well as 
not; why doesn't he put pendant jets on the dress? 
because he knows better ; the jets do not belong on a 
street dress, but on carriage and drawing :oom toilets. 

Study more. Study cause and effect, and the rela- 
tions of things. 

A white pique waistcoat for the street dress is quite 
correct in taste as it can be laundered daily, if need be, 
and may always be fresh and dainty. But a white yoke 
or white trimming of any kind of material that cannot 
be laundered,on a dress that must see hard or constant 
service, where it is certain after a few times wearing to 
look dingy and inelegant, is an error in taste that is 
inexcusable. 

The rich silk passementeries in even the most ex- 
pensive varieties are made of silk wound over cotton 
cords Upon elegant dresses these outwear the dresses, 
45- 



but upon dresses that are to be knocked about from Dan 
to Beersheba they are a poor choice. They do not looK 
appropriate when new and they soon become shabby. 

All silk fringes are worth buying. No silk braids are, 
save for use upon garments that are to be seldom sub- 
jected to hard wear. 

Trimming is not designed to cover up, but to enhance. 
When for economy's sake it is used to cover up, it must 
be selected and applied with redoubled skill to prevent 
it '-giving away" its mission. 

Trimming should mean something. Bands that bor- 
der nothing, straps that confine nothing, bows that tie 
nothing, offend the taste. 

A girdle on a close-fitting plain waist is an anomaly. 
It should seem, if it does not, to belt in fulness. 

Draperies invisibly held are always annoying to the 
sensitive vision. It adds greatly to the influence they 
have upon the eye, to supply a strap or some apparent 
means of holding the gathers. 

A full gathered skirt below a tight-fitting plain waist 
is comical. Where does the fulness come from ? The 
waist should have some fulness, else the body has the 
appearance of having been made and dressed in two 
portions. The body is whole from head to foot, and 
this must be born in mind in order not to spoil the lines 
of the figure and the effect of the dress as a whole. 

The most beautiful trimmings are those worked upon 
the material ; they represent the utmost refinement and 
elegance. Embroideries and those done in connection 
■with fine applique are usually beyond the province of 
the dressmaker, being wrought either on or off her prem- 
ises by specialists. But a gown to be thus ornamented 
should be designed with especial reference to the 
trimming, and the dressmaker is therefore by no means 
unconcerned in the decoration. 

Laces like dress-staffs have well defined limits within 
■which alone they should be employed. Delicate, fine, 
fairy like laces only are suitable for the very young, and 
46. 



the superb heavy rich laces are appropriate only for 
magnificent gowns for stately matrons. There are 
laces and laces, but most people are in a curious state of 
ignorance about them all. 

One need not be a connoisseur in lace to know enough 
about it to be able to tell good from bad, nor need she 
devote much time to the study in order to get a passing 
knowledge that will be of genuine value. For ordinary 
uses it is desirable to know that laces may all be roughly 
divided into hand-made and machine made examples. 
The hand-made laces are either "point" laces, that is 
made stitch by stitch with a needle; or "pillow" 
laces made upon a pillow by weaving with a 
number of little bobbins around pins stuck in the pat- 
tern ; or a combination of pillow and point lace. 

Machine laces do their best and often a wonder- 
fully good best it is too, to imitate all hand-made laces. 
Latterly, the especial fashion in laces has been the 
revival of heavy points or their imitation, those repro- 
ducing the raised points of the Spanish and Venetian 
schools having a particular vogue. This is a far throw from 
the reign of the so-called oriental laces that overswept the 
country a few years ago, but not so erratic a one as it 
seems, for the absence of draperies in the present 
fashions precludes the wholesale use of deep flouncings, 
and the more compact laces that do not lend themselves 
to fulness, and are carefully enough made in the 
machine laces to bear more or less scrutiny, are the only 
ones thats in reason, could be used for the flaring collars 
and revers and similar styles of the present day. 

Handsome lace should not be gathered to disturb 
the pattern, and beautiful fine laces are out of harmony 
with coarse materials ; 'two points that many dress- 
makers quite overlook in embellishing gowns with lace, 
or endeavoring to do so. The so-called guipures, a 
name that has been appropriated by some of the. 
machine laces imitating the ancient guipure which 
included all raised point lace, in good quality are,; 
47. 



suitable for dresses of heavy material as velvets, satins 
handsome wools in combination with these, etc., but 
on the delicate soft stuflfs they are wholly out of place, 
and should not be permitted to mar an otherwise fair 
creation. 

" Thread lace " does not mean anything, for all lace 
is thread lace, whether machine or hand made, being 
either of silk thread, linen thread or cotton thread ; but 
real hand made lace is always valuable and in good 
style if used in conjunction with proper materials. 

Furs are perhaps the biggest lottery in the shoppmg 
trade outside of boots and shoes, and the latter is one 
of the few things with which the dressmaker need not 
bother her head on anybody's account but her own. It 
pays to buy furs of a reputable dealer and depend upon 
his advice. All black furs are dyed, and upon the dye 
depends much of their subsequent value. Even the so- 
called natural black furs are of a brownish tinge and are 
dyed for the market. The Germans dye Persian lamb 
and Astrachan skins better than anybody else in the 
world, and the English beat the world with seal skins. 

Persiana that looks to the inexperienced eye every 
whit as good as the German cured and dyed article, 
undersells it two to one, but the German article will 
outwear it six to one. 

A little information of this kind is extremely useful to 
go shopping with. 

Suppose that furs which are warranted dyed by the 
best dyers in that special line, are offered half lower than 
what seems to be the same article a few doors away. It 
may be that the difference is because of the greater 
prestige of the higher priced store, and that part of the 
difference in price is to pay the fashionable dealer's 
high rent, and not for a superior article in fur. But the 
chances are that the cheap fur, while made up of well 
cured and dyed skins, contain only odds and ends of 
them, put together in such a way that thick and thin 
skin comes together, insuring little wearing quality for 



tiic fur. 

Prices whiffle up and down to accord with fashionable 
favor, but all skins, as of the chinchilla, that come from 
a little animal are one not plenty, are always high 
priced when finely matched. The so-called electric 
seals are high priced at any price, as they wear very 
ill indeed. If it is selected, it should always be for a 
cape, and should be bordered with some strong fur, as 
Martin. The cheap "seal" furs are so soft they wear 
bare on edges very soon, and are not to be thought of 
for jackets or anything that is to be subjected to rub- 
bing. In buying in the spring at " bargain sales," it is 
well to remember that Martin is beloved of moths be- 
cause of its natural odor, while the pests rarely attack 
seal and Persiana and other dyed furs. 

There are furs and furs, and only an expert's opinion 
is worth anything about them, so many are the pranks 
played in curing, dyeing, and sewing the skins. There- 
fore learn all you can about them, so as to know what 
to avoid, and then deal with a A-i house. 

The making of bows is a Parisian knack that deserves 
to be caught over here. It is'nt difficult to make a 
fetching bow, and yet most women dread to undertake 
it, and fail when they do. ' ' What advice would you 
give to a would-be bow maker ?" I asked a Parisian 
adept. " Don't fuss," was her reply. "People take 
too much pains with bows and they look set and 
homely." 

Her way was to make each bow of one piece of ribbon, 
unless she had a lot of short ends to make up for econ- 
omy's sake. She folded a lot of loops together and took 
a bit of fine thread wire, black or white, whichever 
accorded best with the color of the ribbon, and twisted 
it tightly a few times round the loops ; then she gave 
each one a pert little touch, snapped a strap of ribbon 
over the wire, and there was the bow. If she wished 
the loops to set out very bouff antly, she put a flat ribbon 
wire under the ribbon as she bowed it up, but she used 
49- 



little wire, saying that first qualities of ribbon and the 
tight strapping through the middle kept the loops 
fluffy enough. 

If anybody with a scrap of taste will sit down with 
ten cents worth of crSpe tissue paper, and experiment for 
a few minutes, she can learn to make bows as well as a 
French Milliner. 

It puzzles many women to guage the amount of 
material they will need for a dress, if they have no pat- 
tern at hand that gives the precise figures. But it is 
easy to reckon the quantity. How wide is the material? 
How many widths of it will be required to cut the num- 
ber of breadths going into the skirt ? How long are 
these breadths to be ? 

If the cloth is a yard wide and there are to be six 
yards in the width of the skirt, and the wearer needs a 
skirt 42 inches long when finished ; then, roughly speak- 
ing, allowance must be made for six breadths, 45 inches, 
or a yard and a quarter long, each, to allow for turning 
in, or seven and a half yards of cloth for the skirt. 

Of material half as wide, as much again would be 
needed. If the material were half as wide again, that 
is 54 inches, or three halves of a yard, one third less 
material would be needed than for cloth a yard wide. 
For the bodice allow the length from shoulder to bottom 
of bodice back and front, and twice the width from 
shoulder to shoulder including any fulness there is to be. 
The length of each sleeve must be allowed and the 
quantity doubled, if the sleeve is to be large, made in 
one piece and of narrow width goods. Facings and 
small side forms will be provided in the goring. 

It doesn't pay a dressmaker to make buttonholes, 
for there is always a specialist in buttonhole making 
glad to get the work, but now that buttonholes are ' 'com- 
ing in" again it pays to remember that most materials 
require an interfacing under the buttonhole hem of 
stiffened muslin or canvass. 

The buttonhole side proper ? Recall the story of the 
50. 



minister who prayed that none of his hearers (on 
judgment day) should be found on the buttonhole side. 



5^- 



Qolor. 

A A UCH of the effect of dress depends upon its color. 
^ *■ Gowns of handsome fabrics made upon becoming 
lines, may be very ugly in effect because of their unbe- 
coming- colors, or because these are ill combined, or are 
out of harmony with their surroundings. 

Nature patiently teaches us impersonal lessons in 
color that we are slow to learn, and, of the habit of close 
observation that unfolds the truth with regard to what 
is becoming to us as individuals, we have precious little. 
It is not that we cannot learn, but that we will not. 
"What a pretty bonnet," I say to a friend, and add 
with brutal frankness, "but you ought not to wear 
yellow." 

"Pshaw," says she, " what odds? I like yellow," 
And off she goes looking sallow and dull, and every 
body who sees her and chances to have an ' ' eye for 
color," shudders at her bad judgment. 

" What odds ? " That is what we think, if we do not 
say it. And yet we like to think of ourselves as artists 
in dress. The truth isn't always pleasant, but it is 
good for us. We shall never be a really well dressed 
people, till we take the trouble to know beauty when we 
see it, and, how to outwit ugliness, and until we are 
really honest with ourselves. 

An entire red gown is a fascinating bit of color in 
the dim religious light of a studio corner, but red is a 
trying color to go abroad in by daylight on the city 
streets in July. It's worth nothing that the gorgeous, 
crimson, sunset, glow comes when the shadows are 
deepening. A red gown on a sandy beach with an 
expanse of sea for a background, or a scarlet parasol in 
the fastnessness of the mountain, is delightful, but 
either in juxtaposition with crude red bricks in town 
52. 



under a fiery sky is an atrocity. 

Nature! Fudge, say you? And you point out that 
a green lawn, with gay flower beds may be well enough, 
but that a grass green dress with trimmings all the 
colors of the rainbow, would be sufficient to put an 
impressionistic painter's teeth on edge. 

But not so fast. A green field is never a mass of 
solid color. There is always a delicate bloom of gray, 
purple, or yellow or all three on the green. The gorgeous 
blossoms are not so many bits of primary colors. The 
subtile gradations in tints, the delicate harmony of 
tones — these are what please. Contrast, even quite 
sharp if it be not too violent, is also attractive, but a 
certain amount of perspective is essential to get the best 
eflfect. The manufacturers of dress goods have suc- 
ceeded, past all previous belief, in reducing all the 
glories of coloring to all wool at so much a yard, but 
beyond this their power ceases. It is the dressmaker 
upon whose conscience the color blind, or color insensible 
woman must, in the end, depend. She may not know 
better than to order a gra3S green frock with garnitures 
of artificial old fashioned garden posies, but the dress- 
maker who expatiates upon the superior loveliness of a 
sage green gown with embroideries that introduce all 
the colors, but toned down to a perfect harmony as in 
some of the oriental handiwork, will have won a great 
victory, and saved to herself the credit for making Mrs. 
So and So a gown that is something for artists to rave 
over, and even men to rhapsodize about. 

There never was a dressmaker, of course, who did 
not patiently wade through books about color, one of 
those that deals in details, monstrous long and wise. 
Orange and from that to blue, and back to white, each 
and every possible color and shade of it is taken up in 
turn, and the truth told with regard to its proper and im- 
proper combination with every other color and shade. 
But you find it impossible to remember the statistical ob- 
servations. So do I. So does everybody. We shall do 
53- 



better to keep our eyes open and observe. Study the 
pictures of the painters who are noted for their superior 
coloring, for one thing. Ask ourselves questions about 
toilets that we see everywhere, for another thing. Try 
the effect of certain colors alone and in combination 
against certain faces, for another thing. Don't you 
remember holding the butter-cup under some school- 
mate friend's chin years ago, to see if she "liked but- 
ter ?" Don't you remember the glow the buttercup 
yellow threw upon the skin? It might not be so becom- 
ing to her now, if she had eaten fried foods and taken 
no exercise these many years. 

It helps out one's success to remember that many 
colors, that cannot be worn becomingly close up about 
the face in a high necked dress, are becoming enough 
in a low necked gown. Shades that are becoming by 
daylight, may not be so by artificial light, and vice- 
versa. This is the reason why the careful shopper 
selects the colors for her evening finery in the 
" evening silk room " that is a feature of all leading dry 
goods shops, a room in which only artificial light is 
furnished. 

It is not even safe to match odd colors by daylight 
alone, if they are also to be worn in the evening, as 
shades that are often pretty together in the sunlight, 
are ready to "swear" at each other, as the French 
have it, by gas light. 

There is a wonderful scene of proportion observed 
by nature in her color arrangement, riotous as it some- 
times seems. The sharp contrasts that she sanctions, 
are shown, it must be remembered, subject to the soften- 
ing influences of perspective and environment. A 
jonquil with its vivid yellow petals and green stem has a 
whorl of a harmonizing shade between the colors to 
blend them. 

If the daffodil yellow bodice above the leaf green 
skirt is not agreeable to contemplate, try introducing yel- 
low in jewels or tapestry needlework upon the green gown. 
54. 



Bright colors are seldom becoming in the mass, 
except to pretty children, or when the surroundings can 
be arranged with special reference to the toilet, but 
they may be introduced as accenting notes. The deli- 
cate maiden who figures in story books, "clad in a plain 
gray frock relieved by a single glowing damask rose," 
is not unknown in real life, and a pretty picture she 
looks, providing she has the clear skin and rose tinted 
cheeks that look well in neutral tints. 

But why the elderly woman who has lost from her 
cheeks and from her hair, all the color they ever had 
and from whose eyes the sparkle of youth has departed, 
should array herself in gray, is a disheartening mystery. 
She of all others requires the soft warm tints of rich 
crimsons and prune russet and plum shades, those that 
are so successfully dyed, that they seem to have a bloom 
over them like that on the velvety petal of a deep jac- 
queminot rose. As one grown older too, she looks best, 
not in the simple colors and plain fabrics, but in those 
with slightly roughed surfaces, and "invisible" com- 
binations of colors, as in the miroir velvets, the shot and 
ombre silks, and the very fine mixtures in cloths. 

"The too stout figure by the judicious choice of colors 
and combinations of contrasting shades, may manage to 
appear like a willowy girl," writes an artist, and, while 
■we may question the exact truth of his enthusiastic 
utterance, it is unquestionably correct in principle. 

It is most creditable to fashion, the despot, that she is 
becoming more and even more liberal. She no longer 
sets the seal of her approval upon any one color or com- 
bination ; and, while smiling benevolently upon a variety 
of colors, she approves more and more of colors as well 
as designs that are becoming. You may make up bleuet 
with equanimity for the youthful person's house bodice, 
because her hair is glossy and brown, and her cheeks 
are wild roses, her eyes like a deer's, and her skin like a 
baby's, but defend me who have colorless straw hair 
and dull blue eyes, a muddy skin and no color in it, save 
55. 



about the nose, from wearing bleuet, shell-pink, olive, 
or any of the other colors from ecru to majenta, in 
which I shall be equally a fright. 

There is a medium bright shade of green with consid- 
erable depth to the color, in which I look surprisingly 
well, and there is another shade of brown, a warm deep 
rich brown with gold lights in it, which also reduces my 
hopeless ugliness to its lowest terms. See that I am 
advised about accepting them, if you would save your 
gowns from losing all their credit through being most 
unbecoming to me. 

Black and white in combination are generally 
becoming to all European races, say artists, the fair 
skin forming a neutral tint between the two. Creamery 
white is becoming to nearly all people, save to the 
sallow woman under strong daylight. Where there is 
too little color in the eyes and hair and cheeks, an all 
white toilet may be saved from failure by the addition 
of becoming color in bands and bows. 

The florid, blowzy complexion looks best in clear 
black, with a creamy tint, placed between the neck and 
the dress to soften the contrast. The same thing is 
true of all colors ; the late reign of the colored velvet 
stock to the contrary notwithstanding. A line of 
creamy white should come between the face and any 
decided color to make the latter most becoming. 

Dark hair and fair skins take kindly to reds, and 
red is amazingly becoming to flaxen haired children and 
blondes of older growth, when the skin is fair and 
clear — not otherwise. A dull complexion needs lighting 
up, but do not set it in too great a glare of light. Very 
light and very dark shades are more becoming, as a gen- 
eral thing, than medium shades of any color. Swarthy 
and sallow skins may wear reds to advantage, if they 
are rich, not dull in color, and neutral shades with a bit 
of rich color here and there ; but dull brown and dull 
greens, and the pale tint of blue and pink etc., never. 

Reddish gold hair and gray or blue eyes look well 
56. 



in rich warm browns, golden hair inclining toward 
flaxen, and very fair skins find greens with yellowish 
tones, peachy-purples, and purpling red plum shades 
becoming. Pale pink is exceedingly unbecoming to 
anyone who has not dark hair, a very pale skin, with a 
delicate bloom of pink in the cheeks. Pale blues and 
very light greens look well with delicate skins and 
light hair, if the eyes are not dull. 

Complexions vary from person to person, literally in- 
finitely, and no rule is iron clad. But this much is cer- 
tain ; all colors are not equally becoming. Charming 
toilets in themselves are often robbed of their effective- 
ness, because of their unbecoming color, and therefore 
the clever dressmaker who is looking out for all the 
credit to which she is entitled, will, as a matter of busi- 
ness, make herself a judge of the values of color. And 
as a matter of beauty, she can lay claim to her prowess 
in this direction upon a far higher plane than that of 
mere reputation's sake. 



57. 



style. 

4 6 O TYLE" applied .to the description of dress is a 
i curiously elusive quality either to lay hold 
upon or to define. 

A " stylish" garment describes one made in one of 
the fashions of the day, but. when the "style of the 
garment" is mentioned, we do not know, until we see 
the garment or hear it described, whether it is made in 
the style of yesterday or of last century. A dress may 
be "in style" so far as its cut and finish go, and yet 
not look " stylish" when it is worn, either because it is 
worn in the wrong way or by the wrong person, showing 
style to be not a simple but a compound product. 

"A stylish woman " is said frequently of one dress- 
ed a la mode, and yet, in the next breath, some other 
woman is described as "good style" though she may 
not wear the latest fashions or the costliest material, 
and need not herself be beautiful. 

The French word chic which is so glibly misused in 
in English, expresses, in the original, a good deal of 
what we mean by " style " in English, although chic is 
a substantive and we use it as an adjective. Comically 
enough cMc in the original is a masculine noun, but 
whatever it may have had of righteous masculine appli- 
cability when the Lords of Creation wore brocades and 
real laces, in these days of black swallow-tail coats and 
trousers, chic is practically an exclusively feminine ap- 
pelation. Chic means knack. It is the knack in getting 
up a toilet that shows itself in the ensemble, or the 
absence of it that makes or mars the style of the toilet. 

"We say style," says an old writer, " of anything, in 
which form or matter is conceived to be, in however 
slight degree, expressive of taste and sentiment." And 
it is taste and sentiment more than costliness that go to 
the making of sfyZe-that intangible something, so hard to 
58. 



locate and so much to be desired, because it is so much 
admired in woman's dress. 

"Good style," that is, really good style— the best 
style — is a landmark. Just beyond its borders is that 
quagmire of loud and flashy fashion into which so many 
women tumble and flounder through trying to hit style 
and making a poor shot. 

There is a certain breezy quality in the fashions of 
the day, allowable in the dress of buds and young 
society blossoms, that is fatal to the attire of older 
women. If the latter attempt to copy it, they are cer- 
tain to make themselves ridiculous by calling attention 
to the stretch of their imagination between their ageing 
figures and faces, and their girlish clothes. A stretch so 
great that the connection becomes painfully attenuated. 
On the other hand, it is perfectly possible for women 
even of three score and ten years to dress stylishly. It 
must be possible for others, because some elderly 
women already do both dress stylishly and look stylish. 
But it can be done only by clothing the dignity of years 
in clothes not only elegant (or at least fashionably 
modish and refined), but in fashions that have some 
dignity. 

The era of the "New Woman" has in no way 
displaced the Old Woman-old in femininity, whatever 
her years. She is about, just as usual, asking in her 
search for help in the matter of clothes, of all her 
acquaintances, '' Who is your dressmaker?" "Is she 
stylish, and does she fit well?" Vernacular for, are 
the gowns she makes a success. 

What does it mean, this being " stylish?" 
All dressmakers cut and fit and make by the newest 
designs, but everybody knows to her distress of mind, 
that only the minority of woman get safely into that 
haven of dress — "style." The woman who wishes she 
were stylish and knows she isn't, would like to know 
the reason why she is not; and the dressmaker who 
sees the ducats scampering into other tills than her 
59- 



own, and fame making a mundane halo around other 
heads than hers, wishes she knew the reason. 

Style is not a synonym for richness of apparel, for 
it is not possible to turn round without seeing two 
women of whom one may be said to be "stylish" and 
the other quite devoid of style, and, yet, the latter is 
more often than not the more expensively dressed. 

Style isn't imitation. There are women galore 
whom one might dress up in duplicates of all the splen- 
did clothes ever made, and they would still look dowdy 
and frumpy. 

It is a good deal easier to tell what style isn't, than 
what it is. For one thing, though, it is a combination 
of qualities. The stylish woman not only has stylish 
clothes, (clothes made modishly, however inexpensi- 
vely), but she wears them stylishly. 

Personality is the real essence of style. "That 
which can contrive, which can design, must be a person," 
says Paley "These capacities constitute personality, 
for they imply consciousness of thought." 

A dressmaker, almost any dressmaker, can learn 
to cut and to fit and sew a dress, and yet be almost as 
impersonal as an automaton, but the dressmaker who 
turns out a "creation," must herself be a person with 
contriving and designing faculties, and must have so 
keen a scent for discovering the leading traits of the 
women for whom she makes gowns, that she recognises 
them when she finds these leading characteristics, and 
knows how best to set them off with articles of dress. 

Every conoisseur in gems knows that only a strik- 
ingly beautiful, brilliant, statuesque woman with fine 
coloring can wear diamonds. Upon the quiet little 
mouse of a woman ; on the sallow, homely woman, they 
are like the glare of an electric light in showing up 
her facial shortcomings. Diamonds belong to the 
handsome woman, with flashes of wit to keep the sparkle 
of the stones company. 

The handsomest materials made in the newest 
60. 



il 



fashions are by no means to be distributed hap-hazard 
among women, any more than should jewels. One 
woman looks well in one style, another in some other 
and quite different one. 

To find out what style suits any particular woman, 
the woman herself must be studied. To one who never 
thought of the doctrine of fitness in connection with 
style in dress, it might seem a huge undertaking to root 
into the subject to such depths, but it is the route taken 
and followed by every prominent dressmaker.^ 

It doesn't make any difference whether I am a 
Methodist or an atheist, an admirer of Howells or an 
apostle of romanticism, when it comes to selecting the 
color of my dress ; the proper color or colors depend up- 
on my complexion, and the lines of the dress should ac- 
cord with my height and avoirdupois. But if I am a 
dashing young person who plays golf, and drives a four 
in hand, and dances the German with the leader, and 
gives dinners and goes to the opera, my style of dress, 
the style that would be perfectly correct for me would 
be totally bad style for the Sister of Charity. Her figure 
may be like mine, her coloring the same, but her mode 
of life is so different from mine, that the clothes in 
which I might be properly dressed and very effective, 
would be as incongruous in the slums as the Sisters cor- 
rect toilet would be in the box seat of a coach. 

By the same token, the pretty, trailing, clinging, 
charming gowns that are tout aufait upon the artist 
dreamer in her studio, she being young and lovely, 
would be in wretchedly bad style for me who am getting 
fat, and forty and not fair, and devoted to business and 
the hustling bustling walks of Hfe. 

Stvle has to do with the fashions that are in vogue ; 
it has also a great deal to do with the skilful or unskilful 
way in which the reigning modes are adapted to the 
woman who is to wear them, and to her needs and re- 
quirements. It also depends a good deal upon the way 
in which a woman wears her clothes after they are made. 
6i. 



Some woman are not " stylish," dress them in what 
you will. They do not "carry" their clothes well. They 
do not carry themselves well, and their gowns look, how- 
ever handsome in themselves, or however appropiate, 
as if they merely happened upon them and not as if 
they were designed for the woman who wear them. The 
dressmaker can do a great deal ; but there is a point be- 
yond which she fails, unless her efforts are supported 
by those of the woman for whom she designs. 

A word to the wise is sometimes sufficient, and, if, 
when I am lamenting the while you struggle with the 
fit of my bodice, because ' ' Mrs. Brown always loots so 
well in her clothes," you were to say Mrs. Brown carries 
off her clothes well, it might have a salutary effect upon 
me. 

The " stylish" woman has a good poise. She stands 
well, and she walks well, and she carries her head well, 
and her clothes take on just the right swing. Put them 
upon the woman who shambles ; the woman who stands 
on her heels instead of upon the balls of her feet ; the 
woman who throws her abdomen and hips forward, and 
lets her chest sink in and her shoulders droop forward 
and her back flatten ; and the style of the toilet is over- 
shadowed by the lack of style in the woman herself. 

If dressmakers called the attention of their custom- 
ers not brutally to their deficiencies, but politely to the 
superiority of certain styles of dress for certain styles of 
figures, much might be gained in the way of satisfaction 
for the customer, and credit to the dressmaker. 

The woman who is admired for her style in dress- 
ing, no matter what the time or the occassion, looks as 
if what she wears at that time and upon that occasion 
were thought out with especially reference to the time 
and the occasion and especially to her. 

How many, many toilets are to be seen on every 

hand that look as if they were picked up hap-hazard, a 

piece at a time, at a ready made shop, or very often as 

if they were actually made an inch or two at a time ; as 

62. 



if the designer did not know how she was going to make 
the sleeves till she got the rest of the bodice done : as if 
the skirt were made in another mood, from quite 
another point of view the really stylish dress is thought 
out as a whole. It "hangs together" well; the 
*' composition," as painters of pictures say, is good. It 
may be a morning dress for the street, simple as an un- 
trimmed skirt and round waist of black crepon with a 
twist of ribbon about the waist and neck and wrists can 
make it, but it hangs just right as to skirt, fits just right 
as vO bodice, is of a becoming color, and the lines suit the 
figure ; it is fresh and wrinkled and unfrayed. Every 
detail accompanying it from gloves to delicate linen 
handkerchief is spick and span ; the wearer walks as if 
she were an uncrowned queen, and three quarters of 
all the men and women who pass her say ' ' awfully 
good style." 

The very next woman is over-dressed in the morning 
in a toilet elaborate enough for an afternoon tea, she has 
a bad carriage, her hair is stringy, her gloves a little or 
a good deal soiled, her veil looks as if it had been put on 
in the dark, etc. etc. and she has the general air of having 
been left over from the day before. 

The chances are that her dressmaker receives a 
good deal of the blame for the lack of "style" about 
this second woman, and not infrequently, she is a good 
deal to blame for having made up a street dress that is 
over done, and for having failed to so subtly impress her 
customer with the all-round character of style in dress 
that she is not a credit to her when the customer walks 
abroad. 

The dressmaker who succeeds in giving to her 
gowns the coveted stamp of style, has her fortune in 
her grasp. Therefore, it is worth while for her to 
know all there is to know about the externals that 
contribute to style, and enough about the core of the 
matter, which is the wearer's own bearing and carriage 
and keen appeciation of detail, to coax these up to the 
63. 



standard necessary to set off properly the dressmaker's 
successful designs. 

Study materials and study designs with a view to 
adapting one to the other. Study the woman her face, 
her figure, her complexion, and her needs in dress — in 
the light of the position she fills in society. Then, 
having gotten a fair picture of what the ensemble should 
be, make the details agree with it, never loosing sight 
of the fact that the stylish dress looks as if had 
been "composed" as a whole, not collected in fragments 
and fastened together till there was enough of it to cover 
the woman. 

And, to top off with, the stylish dress must be carried 
off with a stylish air, and this depends upon the woman 
who wears it. Some women are hopeless, so far as 
style goes. Others are a great success within themselves. 
Others are malleable material and susceptible to the 
clever dressmaker's missionary efforts. Be a mis- 
sionary. 



64. 



jiow to Select gotl^es. 

6 i r^^> dear ! What shall I get for a dress?" 

^^ Poor dressmaker ! As if she did not earn 

her money hard enough in dressmaking, she is expected 
to have a wealth of suggestions always on draught 
about selecting the materials as well as the fashions for 
making them up. And, yet, who is so well equipped as 
the dressmaker or who should be so well equipped as 
she to give just this information ? It is for her advan- 
tage, moreover, to do so, even at the expense of the 
extra time required. It helps in securing for her the 
best possible materials to work with, and thus increases 
many fold her opportunities to turn out work that will 
do her credit. The growing custom, already referred 
to, among dressmakers, of shopping, even of importing 
for their customers, proves that many dressmakers 
have already found out the advantages of designing 
their gowns as far back as the materials themselves. 

But it presupposes no small amount of knowledge 
on the part of the dressmaker, to expect her to be infal- 
lible in planning every gown she makes to perfection, 
beginning with its very beginning. 

The fashion chronicler does not need to be nearly 
so wise as the dressmaker. The former tells what the 
fashions are — all of them. The dressmaker must needs 
know the virtues of every design, and enough to guard 
against bringing out the possible vices of the style by 
placing it where it does not belong. The customer 
must judge of the limit of expense for her order, but 
beyond this no one should be better able than the dress- 
maker to say just what the price named will do, when 
spent to the best advantage. It would seem with the 
great variety of materials and styles for making ever at 
hand, that it should be an easy matter to suit every 
body to a T. So it would, if Nature had gotten round 
65. 



to moulding every woman in perfect form, with perfect 
coloring. But she hasn't. The perfect jwoman, physi- 
cally speaking, does exist, but she is rare. Considering 
how rare she is, the dress designers pay altogether too 
much attention to her. 

Most women, measured by an ideal standard of 
beauty, are too tall or too thin ; too short or too stout ; 
they stand badly ; they walk badly ; or they have spoiled 
their complexions by hook or by crook ; something is 
sure to be wrong. The dressmaker's art is to cover 
these defects so far as possible to draw attention away 
from defects toward the good points of the figure. 

The ideal woman can wear anything from a Greek 
chiton, to a Knickerbocker bicycle dress, and look divine 
in it. But with very few exceptions allowed for the 
perfect woman, designs must be adapted before they 
can be adopted to advantage. Fashion plates are drawn 
tall and divinely upon divinely fair women ; to show 
the proper proportions to be observed in the designs 
themselves, according to the mind of the de- 
signing artist — speaking now of designs that are 
good enough to be entitled to consideration by elegantly 
dressed woman. Some designs are hopelessly 
bad at the beginning, and the dressmaker who is 
worthy of her price, should know these at a glance and 
eschew them. 

Designs, however good in ^themselves, are not 
meant to be slavishly copied. A woman six feet tall 
may wear a dress skirt eight or ten yards wide at the 
bottom, but the dumpy little Frau who is as broad as 
she is long will be a ridiculous figure in the same enor- 
mous sweep of skirt. 

The Parisian dressmaker refuses to make sleeves 
for short, stout women of the width of the sleeves she 
makes for tall, thin women ; more than this she does 
not believe in giving the ^short, stout woman gowns 
modeled on the same lines as those for tall, thin women. 
She designs something especially for the roly-poly 
66. 



body. 

•' Make Madam a long coat of this material ? Oh na 
Madam has not length of limb enough for a coat ! " 
.'A cape? ' you suggest meekly, " Worse and worse ;" 
says La Parisienne in effect if not in so many words, 
and she goes on to explain that Madam's figure is too 
short for a cape, but that she is well formed, and a 
close fitting jacket which will display the symmetry of 
her figure, is the proper garment for her. 

In America somebody sees a good looking dress for 
the ideal woman, and in 99 times out of 100 dresses are 
made from it in all sizes from 32 to 44 inch bust meas- 
ure ! Once in a while the style is such, that by enlarging 
or reducing the pattern and keeping the proportions the 
same as in the original, the dress is becoming to large 
and small women: but in most cases the design, while 
all right for the little woman or for the large woman, is 
all wrong for the woman who is at the other extreme in 
size. 

Paris dressmakers and the American dressmakers who 
have their trade turned into an art, make one style of 
sleeve for the woman whose arm is like a rail and quite 
another style for the arm shaped like a ham. But three- 
fourths of the home dressmakers, with too great con- 
fidence in the pictured fashions and too little in them- 
selves, put the enormous leg of mutton or the elbow 
balloon or the skin tight sleeve, if that is in vogue, into 
all their dresses the season through, regardless of the 
size or shape of that forearm, or the eflfect of the sleeve 
upon the huge bust, or painfully thin shoulders, thinking 
only of the fascinating personage who wears those 
same sleeves in the fashion journal. 

All praise to the journals. What should we do 
without them. They scour the world for ideas that 
dressmakers may sit at home and make use of them. 
But the dressmaker has her share of work to do. It is 
to study her patrons with just as much assiduity as the 
fashion chronicler studies the generality of designs. 
67. 



Supposing the fashion chronicle does say that plaids 
are coming " in " again. They are never in fashion for 
the woman who weighs two hundred pounds. 

V-shaped necks are never in style for the woman 
with a long thin face, Et cetera ad infinitum. 

Boleros may come and blouses may go. but 
the princess style reigns forever for the stout woman. 
Details may be altered to accord with those in vogue, 
but the unbroken lines characteristic of the design, (the 
only style of gown which preserves intact that beauti- 
ful line on the stout figure from the arm to the ankles 
over the hip) are anchors of safety. 

There is a fortune, not to mention the thanks of the 
community, awaiting the dressmaker who will make a 
specialty of designing and making dresses for the women 
who are too large, too small, and not well formed. A 
few dressmakers have this gift among their other gifts, 
and profit accordingly ; and until none but the perfect 
woman presents herself for advice about her clothes, as 
well as to have dresses made, it will pay every dress- 
maker to know how best to overcome such deficiencies 
as there are to be overcome. Depend upon it, if they 
are not disguised, peculiarities of figure spoil the effect 
of the most stylish dress. 

It is possible to bring a circle into the field of vision 
in such a way as to make it look like a line without any 
breadth. The superabundant flesh of the fat woman 
cannot be annihilated by the dressmaker, whatever can 
be done by means of dieting and Turkish baths and 
tramping. But it can be dressed in a way to direct at- 
tention away from it instead of toward it. Whatever 
makes one appear to be taller, makes her look more 
slender. Dresses for over stout and short women should 
be designed to attract the eyes of the beholder, up and 
down the figure, and not across it. 

Belts that seem to cut the body in two, basques 
that appear to lengthen the bodice and make the lower 
part of the body shorter, horizontal and all foot trim- 
68. 



mings, hip draperies, everything, in short, that assists 
in making the dress look expansive, including large 
plaids and large figures and very rough cloths, should, 
be tabooed. Unbroken lines from neck to hem, trim- 
mings that run up and down, and narrow stripes in 
dress materials, are especially successful adjuncts of 
the dress for the stout woman. For the short, fat arm 
a cuff that turns back draws attention to the arm ; a 
turn down collar calls attention to the short neck ; tucks 
in the skirt of a dress for a short figure, say as plainly 
as So many words, behold how much too long this skirt 
was for so short a wearer. Black and dark colors make 
the stout figure appear smaller, and "one piece" effects 
in dresses and outer garments should be cultivated. 
Two-third lengths in long coat bodices are disastrous, 
since they reduce apparent height. 

The majority of women who are unpleasantly stout 
make the mistake of thinking that the tighter their 
clothes are the better they look. This is a preposterous 
idea, for it makes them appear, when it is carried into 
execution, as if they were tied up for the spit. The 
very stout woman may be so well proportioned and may 
carry herself so well, that her clothes do not need special 
manipulating in order to make them acceptable. But 
the average large woman carries herself badly, with 
rounding shoulders, and flattened back at the waist 
line, and, through long years of bad management of 
herself, her bust and abdomen are in a fair way to meet. 
The young woman who gets into this deplorable shape 
may undo the trouble by persistence, but the 
elderly woman is generally too indolent, too accustomed 
to her bad figure to be willing to make it over. The 
dressmaker's one hope, then, is to make a dress for such 
a figure that will not tell the whole truth with regard to 
its inartistic outlines. 

The dress that has an unbroken line from under 
the arm to the hem is the best choice, and the under arm 
form should be close fitting ; if the shoulders are very 
69. 



rounding at the back, there will be an unlovely broken 
backed effect between them in a plain waist. Accord- 
ingly the existing fashions in trimming should be 
adapted to cover that line where the back curves sharply 
above the corsets from long habit of settling into them 
and stooping. 

The bodice in front should be a trifle loose fitting 
between the bust and abdomen, the fulness serving to 
hide the real hollow there, suggesting a valley between. 
two mountains. If the fulness cannot be draped a 
trifle, as in the present style of blouse front which on a 
stout woman looks well between two close fitting jacket 
fronts cut quite narrow, it can be drawn in plaits, not too 
tightly, to a point on the abdomen, and seemingly be 
held there by a girdle coming merely from the under 
arm forms. 

Sleeves must not be so large as to make the width 
of the figure enormous, but should be loose enough to 
conceal the over grown arm. Skirts should be full 
enough to hang easily, whatever the style, and should 
be extra long in front so that under no conditions will 
the skirt poke up in front. 

The thin woman's best course is in general terms 
to pursue just the opposite plan to that followed in the 
dress of the stout woman. Fluffy fashions are becom- 
ing to her, shirrings, puffings, floating ends, U-shaped 
necks instead of V-shaped ones if they must be low, 
clouds of tulle, and all manner of devices to soften the 
too angular outlines of face and figure. Trimmings 
should go across the dress, not up and down. Yokes 
and girdles, and foot trimmings that seem to reduce the 
height, loose jacket fronts if any on bodices, full round 
waists where possible, plaids, and never stripes unless 
made up horizontally — these, are some of the details 
that the skilful dressmaker will observe. 

Sleek, smooth, cold, plain surfaced satins are very 
trying to the thin, colorless woman; and "nigger head" 
materials, large figured, high colored brocades make 
70. 



the big woman look bigger and blowzier. 

Nothing but complete metamorphosis will make a 
beautiful woman out of a homely one, and this is 
beyond the province of even the dressmaker, but she 
has it within her power to make a fright of a really 
very good looking woman, or to make a really well 
dressed and attractive picture of a woman to whom 
nature has not been kind. 

The dressmaker who makes up her mind to include 
the latter feat among her specialties is certain to have 
half the feminine world at her feet. 



Eco^o/ny. 

THE best is the cheapest. The saying is so trite 
that it has lost some of its force. Everybody 
believes it, but a great many people make bold to dis- 
regard it, because they find so many seeming exceptions 
to the rule. The truth is, these are not exceptions — the 
instances where the best does not prove to be the cheap- 
est. They are the cases merely where the best is not 
the highest priced. A great many people make the 
mistake of thinking first class quality and expensiveness 
are identical. Good grades cost more than poor ones, 
but fancy prices are very often asked, not because the 
quality is super excellent, but because the pattern is 
novel. 

The best is the cheapest, all things taken into con- 
sideration. One would not buy the best quality of any 
goods for a stage dress to wear one night, because the 
grade that would answer every purpose for the case in 
hand, would not have to withstand wear, and something 
less valuable would look to all intents and purposes 
quite as well across the footlights. But when it comes 
to buying clothes that are to be subjected to close 
scrutiny and continued wear, it pays to get the best 
quality, whether it be flannel or cloth of gold. 

The old fashioned distinction between a "best 
dress" and one of every day wear, has passed away 
with the introduction of the custom of having a special 
dress for many special uses, — calling, wheeling, dining, 
the theatre, shopping, etc., etc. The woman who lives 
in the country and does her own housework and has 
one dress a year which she must put on every time she 
puts on her bonnet and leaves her own front door, still 
speaks of her "best dress," but the chances are that 
even her daughter belongs to a woman's club, and is in 
other ways advanced enough to divide her wardrobe up 
72. 



into at least half a dozen dresses ; instead of two. Each 
one of these half dozen is distinctive in style, however 
unpretentious the style is ; or it should be, if she wishes 
to make any pretention to being well dressed. 

It is a mistake to have half a dozen dresses alike, 
save for a possible difference in color, or the adjustment 
of the trimming. Yet very many women do this who 
do not know better, and dressmakers somewhere aid and 
abet them. The result is a number of cheap materials, 
cheaply made, no one of the dresses looking anything 
but commonplace. 

The clever woman, whether she be the poor country 
girl or the rich country girl or a city woman, knows 
better than this. She has one street dress ; one dress 
that is, that will answer to wear on the street whether 
to shop or to church, to travel in or to make an informal 
call in. This dress she has as good as she can get ; the 
style is not pronounced enough to become known when 
it has been once worn, but the cloth is of the best, and 
the workmanship and style are A-i of the kind. 

Then the clever woman who is trying to economise, 
having gotten her one good street dress for the season, 
takes care of it. She does not loll about the house in it. 
When she gets home, off comes the dress with its 
perfect fitting bodice that will not stand lounging, and 
on goes a house dress. Neither does she wear her 
stylish street dress with its elegantly hung and un- 
wrinkled skirt to the theatre to sit in for several hours. 
She puts on a skirt that will stand wrinkling, and a 
fancy waist into which she can settle without ruining it. 

How does the way a woman wears her clothes, after 
she gets them, concern the dressmaker ? In several 
ways. It is for the best interests of a dressmaker that 
the people for whom she makes dresses — from herself to 
her least valuable customer — shall be as well dressed as 
possible. The woman who is always correctly dressed 
is a great credit to the dressmaker, and the woman who 
dresses well on a little money greatest of all. Many 
women know ao better than to add one poor character- 



73. 



less dress after another to their poor wardrobes, and 
always, as a result, "look just the same no matter what 
they have on." The dressmaker can prevent this if she 
will educate her customers, and it is for her advantage 
to do so. 

No amount of skilful manoeuvring will make fifty 
dollars do the work of a hundred, if both sums are 
spent to advantage, but the difference between what 
fifty dollars will do in the hands of a shrewd buyer and 
clever planner, and what it does when spent by a 
careless purchaser who does not know a good thing 
when she sees it, is hardly to be overestimated. 

There are bargains and bargains. The kind of 
bargains that secure 12^ cent goods for 12 cents, saving 
half a cent a piece on something by spending hours of 
time, and a fountain of strength, isn't worthy of any- 
body but a drummer buying by the hundred thousands, 
The "mark-downs" of pronounced styles, when the 
styles are passing out of fashion and are so pronounced 
as to look old fashioned as soon as made up, is another 
type of alleged bargains that should be passed by. The 
good dressmaker aims at distinction in all she makes. 
She should not therefore when shopping or giving 
advice to shoppers defeat this object. The woman of 
limited means who must wear any dress that she has for 
a long time, should be advised to get something com- 
paratively inconspicuous, letting its elegance of fit, 
finish, and general " air" make up for its lack of ultra 
modishness. Only the women who can have several 
dresses at once and throw them aside as aoon as the 
pronounced style passes, should be advised to get 
extravagantly big patterns, markedly peculiar combi- 
nations, etc. 

It pays to buy the best linings, also to have the best 
whalebones, the best sewing silks, etc., or two gowns, 
of which one is to be subjected to hard wear, say, for a 
school teacher's working dress, and the other is to be 
reserved for visiting and special occasions, the better 
material should be put into the dress that is to be worn 
most. 

74- 



It is the dressmaker s province to know shams from 
goods that are worth while, and, if she does, she will 
ward off on the part of her customers, the purchase of 
goods which she knows are merely "dressed" to look 
like something they are not. The dress goods in both 
wool and silk that would deceive almost manufacturers 
themselves when on the counters, but which look as if 
they had been passed through fire and water when they 
have been worn a few times, are a cross to the dress- 
maker, for upon them her happiest efforts are thrown 
away. They have no "body," and look cheap and 
poor when they have been worn a little while. 

There are real bargins to be had by the keen eyed 
shopper, if she knows what she wants, and be not 
cajoled into taking something she does not want be- 
cause it is marked ' 'below Qost. " Good boots with a 
soiled sole and a button or two missing are good bargains, 
if they are good boots, but the truly economical person 
no more thinks of buying boots or gloves or silk, unless 
they are guaranteed by a reputable dealer's name, than 
she thinks of flying in the face of Providence in any 
other direction. 

Women are themselves to blame for the trash in the 
market, because of their illogical determination to have 
something for nothing, and, when women become wise 
enough to sort the good values from the poor ones and 
buy only the latter, there will not be so much shoddy 
material on every hand, to hamper their selections. 

Some good goods are sold cheap, some cheap things 
are no good, and some goods are never cheap. 

Trimming is meant to be ornamental garnitures, 
and poor trimming is not only an offense to the cultiva- 
ted taste, but it cheapens the best dress, and makes the 
poor dress pitiful. For economy's sake, too, as well as 
for the sake of style, it is better to put the limited 
amount— where it is limited— that can be afforded for a 
dress, into the material first, spending enough, if it 
takes the entire sum to do so, to insure the linings and 
outside dress stuff being of sufficiently good grade to 



75. 



look well. One good dress clothes its wearer better 
than any number of commonplace ones. 

A low priced creamy cashmere may be ecomical for 
a Greek evening gown, but a black one tailor made 
from the same grade would be rank extravagance, 
costing the value of all the findings and making, to no 
end but a poor dress at best. 

Low priced buttons that look well enough to be 
acceptable to the eye, may be economical, but a cheap 
quality of skirt binding is most extravagant, because of 
the short time it wears and the time it takes to replace it. 
The " short length" that is sold at a reduction in price 
is an economical purchase, if it fills a need, but not if it 
be bought merely because it is cheap. It is not economy 
to buy enough extra of the original material to have 
some left over, because when, later on, the new material 
is added, it makes the parts of the dress that are still 
retained look older than they really are. 

It is economical to have good judgment and to use 
it and good judgment increases with cultivation. 

There is economical economy and extravagant 
economy ; the economical economy does not mean going 
without, but "thrift, thrift Horatio." 



76- 



To make over or not to make over? This is a ques- 
tion dressmakers are forever revolving in their 
minds. Does it pay? Yes and no. It pays if one has 
talent for re-making, and takes the stand of asking as 
much for making a whole dress out of old stuff as from 
new material, charging for "fixing over" in proportion 
to the time consumed. 

There are always women who must economise who 
find themselves with good material on hand, so good 
that if it be skilfully worked over, it makes them better 
dressed than they could be in any new material they 
feel able to buy. A good many of these woman are 
willing to pay fair prices for making over the old things, 
providing taste and ingenuity and style are combined 
in the process. 

There are dressmakers in New York who almost 
confine their work to making over, and who make hand- 
some incomes from so doing. One woman in particular, 
formerly with one of the largest and most fashionably 
patronized dressmaking establishments, decided to 
make a specialty of making over and go into business 
for herself, because there was a constant fire of queries 
from the customers of the place where she formerly 
was, for the address of some one who would take old 
materials still good and revamp them into stylish up-to- 
date frocks, or parts of frocks. 

This dressmaker asks her customers to send to her 
all of whatever they have on hand that they wish made 
over ; she looks it over and makes an appointment for 
an interview, in which she says. " With this I can do 
so and so; that I can do nothing with; this, if you will 
spend so much on it, I can make into such and such a 
thing. The work will cost such and such a sum." 
And so on. 

She employs apprentices who save her time in rip- 
ping and pressing; she has the materials cleansed if 
77. 



necessary but she prefers if possible to turn them, for 
most light materials cleansed by any process lose 
their original "dressing," and soil next time much 
more quickly than when new. She has a genius for 
making effective things, this woman. She takes the 
pale pink silk of the faded party frock, and the 
black mousseline de sole of the skirt that is frayed 
and passe about the bottom. The latter she steams free 
from wrinkles and more crepe like than ever, and has it 
accordion plaited, and from the combination produces a 
theatre bodice that is a dream, etc., etc. 

The bodice linings of good fitting waists are often 
perfectly good when the outside is worn out, needing 
perhaps merely to be cleaned about the neck and wrists, 
have some new bones or bone casing, etc. While it 
would not pay to put them into heavy new cloth bodices, 
they can be utilized with comparatively little work for 
the foundations of more or less fancy waists for house 
or evening wear, the wear on which is slight. 

Most silk is ruined when re-dyed. Light silk better 
be turned and veiled with some thin material. Black 
silks, sponged with strong black tea and some ammonia 
come out wonderfully well if they are rolled when damp 
very smoothly and very tightly upon a smooth round 
stick like a Holland shade roller, and have the last 
edge kept in place by a flat wide tape wound round and 
round, the stick and its load being stood away to dry. 
Do not iron the silk. If greasy in spots but otherwise 
clean, sponge all over with naptha (in a fireless room), 
and hang in the air to get rid of the odor. 

Some all wool fabrics dye very well indeed when 
ripped apart. The fairy tales about what can be done 
in dying whole are not worthy of credence. The wool 
shrinks, the lining does not and the latter, when cotton, 
remains near its original color, When the waist is put 
on, the strain upon all the seams makes them show 
white, and the dress is good for nothing. 

Lace that is not rusty but wrinkled can be steamed 
to look like new over the top of a wide mouthed pot of 



78. 



boiling water. Crape ditto. Velvet requires two opera- 
tors ; one to hold it out over the steam, perfectly straight 
as the least bend mars the velvet, the other with a soft 
velvet brush to brush against the nap to assist the steam 
in raising it where it has become crushed. 

It is better when possible to make one new dress of 
two old ones and buy one new one outright, than to 
spend the cost of the new one in buying new goods to 
put with the old, and have in the end but two partially 
worn gowns. 

Where it is necessary to buy new goods for the old 
dress, considerable care must be exercised to select 
something that will make the old goods look better 
instead of worse. The new texture should be generally 
of a different material, that is to say, new velvet looks 
better with old silk than new silk does. Black cloth 
that has been worn sometime looks better made over, if 
possible, with some color than with new black goods ; if 
it is desirable to have the dress still all black, then buy 
the same color of black, and change the texture, putting 
rough cloth with smooth, etc. Black chiffon makes a 
partially worn dull black cloth lifeless and homely. Jet, 
on the other hand, does something to enliven the black 
material. 

It is a good deal easier to put a contrasting color or 
a different shade of the same color with partially worn 
colored goods, than to match the color exactly; where 
it is possible to do the latter, the new color is apt ta 
make the old one look faded beside it. Where other 
shades or colors are selected, have them either in sharp 
contrast or harmonizing. Some sets of shades, as blue- 
greens for instance with yellow-greens, are very ugly 
together. 

The light coachman's drab dress that, however 
carefully cleaned, would soil again too soon to make it 
worth while to remake by itself, may be used with, 
fetching effect under a darker broadcloth that is perfor- 
ated in "pinking" pattern, or in such a way that 
the light cloth shows as a simulated under-skirt, under 



79- 



slashed sleeves, as a waistcoat, etc. But, if the drab in 
the cleansing process has lost its brownish tinge, do not 
make it up with darker brown, since that will merely 
make the light cloth look faded. Use a warm green or 
warm mahogany red-something to give a little color by 
reflection. 

The skirts of a couple of seasons ago, even those of 
one year back, are hopeless as skirts to-day, but a col- 
lection of old skirts in clever hands will make an assort- 
ment of waists which a couple of new black skirts will 
make into several useful and attractive dresses. 

A challie that has lost its first bloom is a good con- 
tribution to the heathen's missionary barrel, but a real 
camel's hair that was lovely when new and light but is 
now soiled or faded, can be dyed black to look like new. 

Trimmings of the nature of passementeries, when 
not worn but which look gray and old, can often be 
made to take on a new lease of life merely by sponging 
them thoroughly on both sides with clear black tea and 
ammonia. Buttons of some kinds take kindly to a gener- 
ous bath of soapy warm ammonia water, and a polishing 
when dry with a bit of chamois. Others, as of cut steel, 
need to be polished with a brush and steel polishing 
powder. Jet which gets very dusty from usage, when 
it is not feasible to wash it or sponge it, can be brushed 
clean with a soft hat brush. Silk passementeries, by 
the way, should never be brushed, but always sponged 
clean with a sponge that is merely damp and not wet. 
Tell customers this when their passementeries are new. 

The fashions of the present day are especially com- 
plaisant so far as making over goes, the great latitude 
allowed in the decoration of bodices making it possible 
to shorten old basques into round waists, make too short 
waists in basque bodices by adding a gored piece or 
several gored basque forms below the waist. Bodices 
too tight across the bust may be enlarged under loose 
blouse fronts. Sleeves that are tight or in old style 
may be slashed to admit puffs, the biggest that ever 
were seen ; indeed there is no portion of a bodice, seem- 



80. 



ingly, which may not be revamped to suit the style, one 
style or another, by adding a yoke, a collarette, a 
ceinture, — some design of fashion that, in the case in 
hand, will prove to be both ornamental and useful. 

The dressmaker who will make over, and make 
over to the best advantage and will make announcement 
of the fact, draws at once to her doors a deal of custom 
that is lying about waiting for some body to turn foster 
mother to it. 

That it pays is proved by the money returns made 
to those who have cleverly seized upon this unending 
branch of dressmaking, either by itself, or in connection 
with their regular work in new materials. 

Whenever and wherever two women gather together, 
the dressmaker who is "a genius in making over old 
things" is lauded to the skies, if either one of the 
women has succeeded in finding her. Patronage flows 
toward the dressmaker who can and will make over and 
who does it well, because she is a rarity and because 
•'making ovei " is an ever present burden of the 
feminine mind. 



8 1. 



Dr(?ss l^<?form. 

SHALL the dressmaker who aspires to be a success- 
ful fashionable dressmaker, bother her head about 
dress reform? 

She can't avoid the subject. 

All modern dress is reformed. There was never a 
time since feminine dress became a complex matter of 
several garments, when women dressed at once so 
hygienically and charmingly as to-day. The most 
ultra-fashionable woman, who does not know that she 
has a suspicion of sympathy with dress reformers, is 
wearing more or less reformed dress. She is wearing 
reformed, or improved — perhaps improved is the better 
word — underwear, not because she wouldn't rather die 
than be unfashionable, and so not because of hy- 
gienic reasons, but because her dressmaker and tailor 
advise her that her dresses will fit much better 
over smooth-fitting under-garments [than [over the old 
fashioned sort loaded with trimming and sweeping 
with fulness. The latter mode smothered in ruffles and 
other furbelows is preserved for her negligee chamber 
robes. 

The fact that French dressmakers, sensitive to the 
inartistic effect of horsehair stiffened silk skirts, decided 
not to use the horsehair in thin stuffs, has a great deal 
more to do with heavy skirts going out of fashion than 
all the preachments of all the physicians, and profes- 
sional reformers. Fashion, not preaching is wheeling 
hygienic dress into line. 

The prettiest dress and the most fetching dress to- 
day has nothing inimicable to health about it. And the 
increasing custom of having a number of radically dif- 
ferent uses, is introducing the sensible as well as 
artistic and fashionable habit of making each one the 
best possible dress for the occasion in question. 

There are a number of professional dress reformers 
in this country and in England who advocate peculiar 
82. 



forms of dress, but the only ones that have any decided 
following are those that look quite like the dresses worn 
by the most fashionable women, but which follow more 
or less closely the outlines of the princess dress in effect 
or principle. 

Any dressmaker who understands her business can 
make any "reform" dress that she is asked to make, 
without any cross to her conscience or offence to fashion. 
In the large cities there are dressmakers reaping large 
incomes by advertising that they will design artistic 
dresses and make reform dresses after the model of this 
that or the other of the Professional dress reformers. 

It is a good stroke of business to make and to make 
attractive any dress one is requested to make. The 
only thing to avoid is turning out a dress that will not 
do one credit. The few dressmakers who were asked 
to make the knickerbocker and bloomer costumes shown 
at the World's Fair by the dress reformers in conven- 
tion there, claimed great credit for their prowess, but 
tailors all over the country have made riding habit 
trousers for years and are making knickerbockers now 
by the hundreds. 

Bicycling is introducing a style of dress for special 
wear which reformers have been decades trying in vain 
to make popular for all occasions. It is a foregone con- 
clusion that women are not going into trousers ever 
save for horseback riding, and then only under habit 
skirts. They are too hideous. The trend is all in 
favor however of " knickers " for wheeling, and just as 
strongly as ever in the world, in favor of trailing lovely 
draped trained creations for the drawing room and 
boudoir. 

It does behove every dressmaker to master the 
intricacies of every possible style of dress that she can 
be called upon to make, if she wishes to hold all her 
trade, and get more. In the city, the tailor not the 
dressmaker, is asked to make the bicycle suit, but in the 
smaller places where "ladies' tailors" are unknown 
quantities, the dressmaker must be tailor and dress- 
maker in one. 

83. 



Personally, she might not be willing to wear knick- 
erbockers or ride a bicycle, though she were paid a 
fortune for it, but it is not good business to refuse to 
make them or not to know how to make them for custom- 
ers who wish this style of dress. The book seller does 
not refuse to sell me a Methodist hymnal because he 
happens to be a Unitarian, that is he doesn't if he is a 
shrewd business man. He undertakes to cater to the 
buyers of books, not to foist his creed upon any one. 

The dressmaker cannot be too catholic in her ability. 
And if she knows the foundations of her trade thor- 
oughly, and has had the good taste and good sense to 
master the art of it, there is nothing she need fear to 
undertake to make, from a gymnasium dress with divided 
skirt, to skirt hidden or revealed knickerbockers for 
athletic sports, or gowns for Queen Victoria's drawing 
room. 



84. 



l9 Qo9c:IiJsio9. 

THE American dressmaker is competing with the 
world. There are no women in the world to-day- 
paying so much attention to dress and spending so much 
money foi it as the American women. There is no rea- 
son in the world why they should not patronize dress- 
makers among their own countrywomen, providing the 
American dressmakers will dress them as effectively as 
foreigners at the same prices.' 

It is a mistake to suppose that all foreign made 
clothes are of the first order. There are poor dress- 
makers on both sides of the water. But the best dress- 
makers in the world, from the stand point of feminine 
adornment, are the leading French dressmakers. 

They smile, as well as they may, at the American 
dressmakers' wild and unending chase for a new system 
of cutting, ever and forever a new cutting system. The 
French are working to-day as they have worked for the 
last five hundred years, so far as methods are concerned, 
but they have not done studying. 

It is a liberal education in the art of dressmaking to 
see a French dress designer working over any portion of a 
new design. The material is considered as tenderly as 
if it were precious, though it may be but an ordinary 
fabric. And the design for making it is fitted to the 
fabric long, long before the dressmaker has a chance to 
fit it to the human figure. 

If the material is to be a rich brocade and there are 
to be organ plaits, they are measured and guaged and 
trial plaits are worked upon, until it has been proved 
that if an inch narrower or an inch wider, the plait 
would break in walking. Only then are the plaits 
declared perfect. 

This is a sample of the way the French have built 
up their reputation, of the way they are still at work 
upon it. They love dress and they do it credit. 



85. 



To the American dressmaker who is content to 
make the cheap dresses and have her customers import 
their high priced gowns, there is nothing to be said. 
But the native dressmaker who aspires to having her 
work and her profession valued in the front rank, must 
study to make dresses well, yes ; but to make them 
well by making them stylish and beautiful at the same 
time. 

It means study ; it means Recognizing the import- 
ance of small things when the small things are important ; 
it means fidelity to detail, and an appreciative eye for 
effects. It means as constant work and thought as 
the members of other professions give to their work. 
The author is never done studying human nature; 
the lawyer studies law as long as he lives ; the musician 
studies his life through ; even the base ball player is for- 
ever on the look out for a chance to improve his playing. 

The dressmaker in this country, taking her work 
and not theories for a criterion, has too often thought 
she had learned all there was to know when she finished 
her apprenticeship. 

There is no such thing as finished up education of 
any kind. So long as fashions change, and fabrics 
change, and no two women are born into the world 
alike, there is constant opportunity to study, if the 
dressmaker means to raise her trade to an art. And 
there is not only constant opportunity, but constant 
need to study. 

It doesn't seem worth while to you? 

Then you are the dressmaker who has mistaken 
her calling, and the sooner you renounce the business of 
dressmaking and turn dentist or cook or actress or nun 
or whatever you have a taste for, the better for you and 
the better for your present profession. 

Dressmakers who adorn their profession are all 
round clever and able women, artists quite as much 
as the painters who make pictures on canvas, and 
yet there is no calling in the country that is much 
more looked down upon. Who is going to raise it to 



its proper dignity? The dressmakers themselves. They 
must work for themselves and for each other. Co-oper- 
ation is the password of the age. Yet everybody has 
co-operated but dressmakers. Why should they not 
work together for their mutual advancement ? 

Every dressmaker cannot go to Paris, or even to 
New York. Why migtit there not be in every community 
a dressmakers' club, from which at least one dele- 
gate every season should visit the fashion centres, and 
go back to her club associates with a head full of new 
ideas, just as delegates from other clubs go and return 
thus, why should there not be a national organization 
of the local clubs, which should meet semi annually and 
discuss new goods and new styles, the best patterns, 
and the thousand and one details of the art of dress- 
making from plaitings to prices? Every woman who is 
worthy of her calling evolves in the course of her work 
certain original ways of doing things that are excellent. 
An exchange of ideas, far from rendering any indi- 
vidual poorer, would make her richer. She still has the 
use of her own discoveries and gains the hundreds con- 
tributed by hundreds of others. 

American women, save in small groups of excep- 
tions here and there, are still a pretty badly dressed lot, 
American dressmakers fail by long odds to receive the 
credit they may hav<j if they will work for it. It is not 
necessary for them to work any harder with their hands, 
indeed it is possible for them to do better work and not 
work so hard with their hands. 

But they must work harder with their heads. They 
must see more and hear more, and think a great deal 
more. 

When the American dressmaker understands the 
possibilities of her profession and grasps them, she will 
have no equal. She can cater to the tastes of the most 
elegant American women as deftly and fascinatingly 
as French women — if she will. 

Perception, Perseverance, and — Perseverance. 

Study, Study. Study. 



87. 




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